


You Only Call Me When You're Dead

by chimera67



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Zombie Romance, Zombies, it is a zombie story after all, slightly disgusting scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 75,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimera67/pseuds/chimera67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just your typical Girl Meets Boy, Girl Falls For Boy, Boy Breaks Girl's Heart Then Joins the Ranks of the Undead and Seeks Forgiveness kind of story.  With mountain bikes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was my 2009 Nano. I wrote it, loved it, sent it off to agents and publishers and was told, "It's really great, but don't you think the zombie thing is over?" No, I'm not bitter. Not at all. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. It's told in alternating first person between the two main characters, Addie and Theo. The sex is pretty tame because I was trying to sell it as a YA. I'll be posting four chapters a week, even though it is already complete, because I have to obsessively check each chapters for errors even now.

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Chapter One: Addie

 

I lifted up my dragon roll and gave it an experimental sniff; since day-old sushi plus day-old  _ Colorado _ sushi tended to equal  _ several _ day-old sushi I had valid reasons to be wary. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers: if it wasn't for the fact that Rick—my boss at Enrico's—let me take home the leftovers every night I'd have nothing for lunch at all. I sniffed one more time. Not bad. It smelled slightly fishy, but then again, what did I expect? It was fish. And besides, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been eel. I took a bite.

“Hey Addie, where's your boyfriend?”

_ Speaking of eels,  _ I thought. Two boys squeezed up next to me at the long cafeteria table, pressing up uncomfortably close against each one of my shoulders. I carefully swallowed the sushi that was still in my mouth, and, equally careful to direct the full force of my fish breath in a concentrated stream, turned to the one on my right. 

“Fuck off,” I said mildly, and took another bite.

He reeled back a little—although whether it was from my words or my breath I couldn't tell—and said, “Come on Addie, we all know you had last period with Theo. Where is he?”

Ah, yes. Last period. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of my last period class: it had  _ not  _ gone well. Man, who would have thought that you could get kicked out of Home Ec? Not that I could really blame Mr. Martinez; after all, I  _ had _ been responsible for setting off all of the fire alarms along the entire hall. Although, in my defense, _ I _ wasn't the one who had sprayed the fire extinguisher into the oven. Talk about overkill. I mean, honestly, the flames had all but died down by the time Zane had managed to get the extinguisher off of the wall and aimed it into the oven. Mostly.

I sighed. Well at least I had gotten the answer to my question, which had been: if a little bit of baking powder and vinegar reacted with cocoa to create the distinctive red hue of a Red Velvet cake, then what would a  _ lot _ of it do? Unfortunately, the answer had been: create a chocolate volcano—one that would overflow the pan, drip down the rack, hit the oven floor, and, eventually, if you weren't paying enough attention, catch on fire.

I also got the answer to a question I  _ hadn't  _ meant to ask, which was: how mad would Mr. Martinez be about me creating a mess of such epic proportions? 

The answer, unfortunately, was: very. Very,  _ very  _ mad.

As punishment I had been ordered to clean out the kitchen's grease trap, a square metal box underneath the dishwashing sink that caught—and preserved—any and all grease that went down the drain. Judging from the amount of grease and the rancid smell it was obviously a job that Mr. Martinez assigned to wayward students about once every ten years. For perhaps the first time ever I was glad that I had never been promoted from my job as dishwasher to server at Enrico's, because there was a chance that if I kept my hands immersed in hot water long enough tonight I could get the last bits of grease out from underneath my fingernails.

The boy on my left poked me in the arm—hard. “Hey. Space Cadet. Boyfriend. Where?” He spaced the words out like he was speaking to someone for whom English was not a first language.

I looked down at my now completely unappealing lunch, and spoke in the same tone, this time not so mildly. “Fuck off and die. Now.” I turned to glare at him. He raised one eyebrow at me mockingly, and so I continued. “ _ Up _ chuckie.” He narrowed his eyes then, drawing them back even further into his face. This had the net effect of making his large brow even more pronounced and making him look even more like a Cro-Magnum than he usually did. It was definitely  _ not _ a good look for Charles Foster. Or, as he was more properly known, and as I had just reminded him, Upchuckie.

Usually I refrained from name-calling of this sort. For one thing I preferred to be a little more original in my insults, and for another I knew too well the pain that came from old—and unloved—sobriquets. For Charles Foster, though, I was willing to make an exception; he was a complete and total douche.

I could have turned and done the same to his sidekick, Fritz Schneider, but Fritz—Shitzi—actually preferred his nickname to his real one. He had received the name in sixth grade after he had eaten too many under-ripe blackberries and then suffered the logical gastric distress that usually followed such an action. However, whereas most people would have been embarrassed by such an incident, Shitzi was not. In fact, he was so proud of the fact that he had stood up in class, announced gleefully, “Hey, guess what? I just  _ sharted _ ,” and then waddled up the aisle and down the hall to the nurse's office for a new pair of pants.

Upchuckie's nickname was different—at least to him. He had gotten his in kindergarten because of his habit of puking at the slightest provocation, a habit that, as everyone well knew, he had had never quite lost, which was why I hadn't turned my fish breath his way in the first place. I didn't need to smell even worse than I already did.

Upchuckie opened his mouth to say something else—almost certainly another variation of the “Addie's boyfriend” theme—when the bell rang and the cafeteria was suddenly flooded with chattering students filling the seats all around us. Soon we were surrounded by a dozen different versions of lunch, and Upchuckie sniffed with interest, trying to decide who else's lunch he was going to ruin today. I glanced around as well, struck as usual by the telling differences between the lunches that people pulled from their bags. At Solanan High everyone brought their own lunch, because even though it was called a cafeteria there was no actual food service here, just a bank of microwaves where you could heat up your food. Or, in the case of me and my sushi, not.

I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of food being brought out all around me. If necessary I could have identified who was sitting where just from the noise: poor kids were the ones pulling sandwiches and chips out of rustling paper bags while rich ones were the ones popping open their take-out containers full of Field Greens Tossed with a Lemony Vinaigrette and Pork Medallions in Cranberry Chutney (or whatever they picked up at the fantastically gourmet—and expensive—market on their way to school). And the middle class kids? There were none. In Solanan, Colorado, just as in the Middle Ages, there were only two kinds of people: rich and poor. Peasants and Masters. Addies and . . .

Theos.

The chair across from me scraped as Theo Frank pulled it out and sat down. I didn't have to open my eyes to know that it was him; his scent—turpentine and Ivory soap—washed over me so quickly I had to stop myself from inhaling it into my lungs greedily. I opened my eyes then, but didn't look up until I saw his elegantly tapered fingers, stained a hundred different colors from the oil paints he used, set a white-frosted miniature cake down on the table in front of me, and then I glanced at him quickly before I could help myself. His eyes caught mine and held them for a moment before I abruptly broke the contact and looked back down at the table, trying to compose myself. That's when I realized what he had set down. Of course. The Red Velvet cake. We were supposed to frost it with a mascarpone cream cheese frosting when it was done.

“Here, Addie. I brought this for you. Since you didn't get to try it in class.”

Theo's soft, melodious voice had the same effect on me that both his scent and his gaze had had. I felt my heart start to beat wildly and sternly told it to knock it off. You'd think that after nine months—nine months in which I had hated Theo Frank more then I'd ever hated anyone in my life—I wouldn't have had to remind myself not to be absolutely  _ thrilled _ whenever he deigned to notice me. I looked up at him now, not trusting myself to speak as I felt myself drawn once more into the depths of his unusual eyes—eyes that seemed to change colors with his moods. Right now they were the soft gray of a stormy morning. I tried to remind myself of the mocking way he had looked at me as I had been on my knees under the sink, forced to scoop the grease out with my bare hands because the trap had been placed so awkwardly that no utensil would fit in the opening. Obviously, I had thought as I struggled, this was a kitchen that had been designed by somebody who had never had to work in one. Probably a hobby project for one of the wealthy students' bored mothers. Like Theo's.

_ That _ thought—the thought of Theo's haughty mother—had been enough to help me ignore his taunting looks at the time. Just like the thought of Gabrielle Frank now was enough to help me shape my expression into a sneer as I looked away from Theo and back down at the cake. I was trying to think of something suitably cutting to say about his perfect creation—it looked like it could have been featured on the cover of a magazine—when Upchuckie reached over in front of me and grabbed it with both hands.

“Hey Theo, you brought me lunch. Thanks.” He opened his mouth hugely and prepared to take an enormous bite. Out of habit my eyes automatically sought out Theo's again, and saw that he was looking at me so intently it was as if I could read his mind.  _ Move _ , he seemed to be saying.  _ Now _ .

Six years of friendship trumped nine months of enmity, so I didn't question it; I just moved. Then Upchuckie bit down into the cake and the smell of it hit me like a bad memory.  _ Grease _ . The “cake” was made out of the congealed grease I had just scooped out of the grease trap, probably pressed into a cake pan and then turned out and frosted. Immediately after coming into contact with the putrid fat Upchuckie's legendary vomit reflex kicked in and he spewed across the table. Theo and I, who had already been moving backwards at top speed, were spared the brunt of the flow, but Shitzi, having had no warning, was not.

“Dude!” he shouted, as the vomit splashed up and off the table and into his face. “That is  _ so _ lame!”

I looked down at the remains of my lunch—day old sushi now covered in grease-flavored vomit—and fought the urge to be sick myself. I probably  _ would _ have been sick, actually, if I had been the one to bite into the “cake.” Realizing that—and realizing that that had been Theo's intent all along—I looked up at him and glared. His eyes were the color of slate.

“Fuck. You.” I said, my voice only catching a little. Before I could start to cry I turned on my heel and marched away, heading for the exit, my head held high

 


	2. Chapter 2

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Chapter Two: Theo

 

I watched Addie walk off with dismay. She had actually thought that the “cake” I had made had been for her. How could she think that? How could she not realize that the joke had been intended for Upchuckie all along? Everyone knew about his greediness when it came to sweets— he was almost as well known for that as for his puking ability. I sighed; yet again I'd managed to screw things up.

I turned back to the table and eyed the mess critically. Just then Zane Toefler walked over pulling a garbage can and carrying a stack of towels. I watched as he pulled the can to the side of the table and, using a wet towel, start to scoop the mess into it.

“Umm, thanks. Can I help?” I asked.

Zane eyed me speculatively, and then shook his head. “No. It's all part of the glamourous role of cafeteria monitor. I would hardly feel as if I were earning my pay packet if I didn't get to clean up vomit at least once a fortnight.”

I winced. The only thing that could've made Zane's fake British accent any more atrocious would have been the addition of “guv'ner” at the end. Although Zane had been born and raised right here in Solanan, word was that he had recently been accepted into the UCLA film-making school; in preparation for that he was trying to reinvent himself as someone who  _ wasn't _ from a tiny Colorado resort town. Someone, apparently, who was British. Or Canadian. Or even South African. It was hard to tell.

“What's with the accent?” Shitzi asked him derisively.

Zane said nothing as he wiped down the table with a towel soaked in bleach. At that moment Chuck returned from the bathroom, and, acting as if nothing had happened, sat down at the newly cleaned table, pulled out his lunch, and started to eat. Shitzi looked at him for a moment, shrugged, and then did the same. Zane had started to wheel the garbage can away when Chuck stopped him.

“Hey! Boy—you missed a spot.” He pointed to a section of the table; I looked at it but didn't see anything. Apparently neither did Zane, because he glanced at the table and then kept moving. Chuck leapt up from his seat, testosterone fairly radiating off of him. “I  _ said  _ you  _ missed _ a spot.” He grabbed Zane by the shoulders, spun him around, and then pointed at the table. Zane gave it a cursory wipe with his towel. “Nope—still there.” Chuck was grinning now, clearly enjoying ordering Zane around.

I wished that Zane would just throw the towel in his face—that's what Addie would have done—but obviously Zane had too great a sense of self-preservation for that. And who could blame him? Zane was probably a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, whereas Chuck was pushing two hundred—all of it muscle. I had once seen him knock down an opponent on the Lacrosse field and then just keep running, like some unstoppable force of nature. I considered telling him to knock it off myself, but I knew that sticking up for Zane now would only make it harder for him in the long run—Chuck would just corner him sometime when I wasn't around.

And so I did what I always did—at home as well as at school. I tried to keep the peace. “Hey Zane, you want to come up to my house tonight? There's going to be a party.”

Zane finished scrubbing Chuck's imaginary spot and looked up. “What kind of a party?”

“Nothing special. Just a bunch of people from school.”

“And a keg.” Shitzi held up a set of keys and shook them.

Chuck laughed and slapped him on the back. “Dude, you got the keys to the bar? That's awesome.”

A keg was just what this party  _ didn't _ need. I turned to Shitzi. “Don't you think your dad will notice an entire  _ keg _ missing from his bar?”

Shitzi shrugged. “Probably not. Besides, I'll just take one that's half full and replace it with a full one. He'll just think it blew while he was gone, which it probably would have anyway. There is going to be some  _ serious _ drinking going on around here this weekend. And not just at your house.”

Shitzi was probably right. After all, this weekend  _ was _ shaping up to be kind of like the trifecta of debauchery. First, there was the closing of the ski slopes: the last chair had deposited its last paying customer the weekend before, and according to tradition the weekend following closing day was given over to local ski bum events like the Naked Slalom and couch-skiing, where drunken lift monkeys competed to see who could go down the slopes the furthest on sofas with skis bolted to the bottom.

This year the event coincided with the state legislature holding a hearing on raising property taxes—a proposal that did not sit at all well with the property owners of Solanan, where even a two bedroom house with no foundation went for a million plus. Of course, the meeting was being held in the state capitol, a six-hour drive away, which meant that anyone who went needed to spend the night.

And then, of course there was the final leg of the debauchery trifecta—the bridgework. A high profile bridge collapse up north meant that engineers had been sent to examine every bridge in the state, coming to the conclusion that the bridge leading into Solanan was in need of repairs  _ immediately _ . Which meant that for the next 48 hours there would be no getting into or out of Solanan—not without an eight hour 4WD trek over the mountains. And even that was iffy, depending on how much snow was still up there. 

I had been watching all week as they moved the heavy equipment into position. From the deck at my house I could see the giant Caterpillar tractors moving into the staging area on the far side of the bridge, their yellow bodies contrasting nicely with the blurred grays and greens of the forest beyond. The colors were so beautiful together that I had even considered painting the scene, but gave it up after a few attempts. While the colors had been dramatic the rest of the scene was not, and I had soon lost interest in painting something that was so clearly lacking in drama. At least, that's what I told myself. The truth was that I hadn't been able to finish any paintings at all for nearly a year now. Start them, yes. Finish them—no. And so I had turned my back on the construction scene and instead started a painting of my house, as seen from the outside. Plenty of drama there.

Early in Solanan's history as a mining boom town my house had been the local power plant. It was perched high up on the canyon walls at the point where the Almas Perdidas River plunged down in a dramatic bridal veil fall for two-hundred feet before it flowed much more sedately through town. At one point the hydro-electric turbines located in our basement had provided enough electricity to supply the entire town of Solanan—and this was when Solanan was a bustling town of fifteen thousand, five times the population it was now. Now, however, they only supplied power for our house—and perhaps one other.

That, however, was not what made my house so dramatic. No, the drama that filled my house was all new, and had nothing whatsoever to do with electricity or turbines. Worse yet, a prime source of the drama was now standing at my shoulder, glaring at me.

“Are you actually trying to turn down a  _ keg? _ What the hell's the matter with you?” My younger sister, Isabel, had come up behind me while I had been talking to Zane When Chuck saw her he turned and slipped his arm around her shoulder before bending down to kiss her with what I supposed was meant to be passion, but looked more like he had dropped a ring down her throat and was trying to fish it out with his tongue. When he finished Isabel tried to smile, but I could tell she was fighting the urge to turn and spit. Obviously the victory of snagging a senior as a boyfriend was not all it was cracked up to be—especially when that boyfriend was one that puked as often as Upchuckie did. I started to laugh, and then turned it into a cough—Isabel was clearly already on the warpath, and the last thing I wanted to do was to set her off any further. 

“Hey Isabel—are you going to be there tonight?” Zane eyed Isabel hopefully, oblivious to Chuck's glare. Maybe he didn't have as much of a sense of self-preservation as I thought.

“I  _ live _ there. Of course I'll be there,” she said dismissively.

“Oh. I just thought you might be going to Denver, with your parents.”

Isabel wrinkled her nose. “ _ Denver _ ? What is there to do in Denver?” 

I thought about the screaming match I had heard last night between my mother and Isabel, when Isabel had  _ demanded _ that she be taken to Denver. She had said that she only wanted to shop, but I suspected that the real reason was so that she could spend time with our mother before she flew off to Paris as she did every summer—alone. Mother, of course, refused.

“Actually, there's a really great old movie theater downtown. Last year it showed every single one of the  _ Death Wish _ movies, in order. This year I hear that . . .” Zane's monologue petered out as he realized that most of his audience was staring at him dumbfounded. Finally Shitzi spoke up.

“Dude, are you  _ still here? _ ”

Zane looked like he wanted to say something, but finally his transitory sense of self-preservation kicked in and he turned to walk away. Or at least that's what I thought—until Zane spun back around and asked me, while looking at Isabel, “So what time's the party?”

“Nine.” I smiled at him in a manner that I hoped conveyed genuine invitation. It would be nice to have  _ somebody _ at my house tonight that could talk about something besides the latest game, or the next game, or that “great game last year,” even if the conversation  _ was _ about Charles Bronson movies.

I allowed myself to wonder briefly what it would be like if Addie were to come to the party. I remembered the long conversations we used to have out on my deck on nights when the stars were so close they were more like a wall than a ceiling. I remembered how she used to laugh every time a shooting star passed overhead, a deep throaty laugh of genuine amazement. I hadn't heard that laugh for a long time now.

What I had heard, though, was her yelling. At everyone and everything. A lot. Sometimes it seemed like she had been mad for a solid year. In fact, she was yelling right now.

“What's up with your girlfriend?” Isabel asked me with a sneer, as we all turned to see Addie yelling at a strange woman at the other end of the cafeteria.

I smiled at the sight: Addie stood toe to toe with a woman in her forties who was wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard in front of her chest. Everything about her screamed “authority,” and yet Addie was unflinching as she shouted at her to get out of her way. The woman flipped open a cellphone and spoke into it like a walkie-talkie.

“Webb, come to the cafeteria, please. I need you.” Her voice was pure business, and suddenly I felt a little frightened for Addie. I stepped over to see what was going on.

 


	3. Chapter 3

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Chapter Three: Addie

 

I hadn't been this mad in a long time—well, at least not since breakfast. There I was, on my way to my next class when suddenly this  _ person _ I had never seen before demanded that I go back to my seat. When I had asked why she had looked down at her clipboard and said, “Just go back to your seat and wait, dear. Your principal will be in to explain it shortly.”

I hated being called “dear.” It was what my mother used to call me. When my mother had still been around to call me anything. “Get out of my way,” I had said, and when the woman hadn't responded but instead just smiled to herself I had started shouting.

I wasn't really much of a shouter—I preferred quiet menace—but I have found that more than anything else, people hate a scene. Especially ones that involved them. This woman, however, barely seemed flustered. Without missing a beat she pulled a cellphone out of her pocket and calmly asked someone named “Webb” to come to the cafeteria. She flipped the phone shut and looked over my shoulder, a frown crossing her face. That's when I turned and saw Theo and his gang headed my way. Great. Theo was smirking, as if he was enjoying my plight. I felt my heart give a little lurch. Once upon a time Theo would have been smirking  _ with  _ me, not at me. Once upon a time, we would have been in this together. Of course, that was  _ before _ .

The woman in the lab coat lowered her clipboard, and I saw that she had a name tag which read P. Jonas. Nothing else—no title, no rank, no affiliation—just a name. So what was she doing here?

Before I had time to ask three men—one of whom I assumed was Webb—walked into the cafeteria. They looked like soldiers: they were dressed in khaki fatigues, but instead of any military insignia they had a small black triangle with a red “S” inside each point embroidered onto the sleeve of their left arms. Now I was really confused. What the hell was going on here?

The first man—Webb, apparently—moved up to P. Jonas' side and saluted smartly before he asked, “What can I do for you, ma'am?” Behind him, trotting briskly, came our principal, Mr. Welsey. He was out of breath as he ran up to the woman and took her by the elbow. She looked like she wanted to rip his arm off at the shoulder for that, and probably could have: Mr. Welsey was so short that every time I saw him I was tempted to go home and look up the exact definition of “midget.”

“Um, excuse me, um, Ms. Jonas? I thought we were going to wait until I could explain everything to the students. Some of them are rather, um,  _ excitable _ .” He looked at me as he said this. 

_ Excitable? _ I thought.  _ I'll give you  _ excitable. I had just opened my mouth to show him how  _ excitable _ I could get when P. Jonas smiled sweetly and said, “Please. Call me Dora. And it's Ben, right?”

Mr. Welsey— _ Ben _ , I amended to myself—flushed and said, “Yes, that's right. But, um,  _ Dora _ , I thought we had agreed to let me explain things to the students. I could call an assembly and—”

P. Jonas turned up the wattage on her smile a bit, looked around the cafeteria and said, “But aren't they all already here?”

Mr. Welsey blinked and looked around the cafeteria himself. “Well, yes, I suppose they are. Most of them. This is lunch, after all—no need to ditch  _ this _ period, heh heh.”

The woman let loose with an entirely fake laugh and said, “Oh Ben, you're so funny.” Again, Mr. Welsey flushed. I hoped that Upchuckie wasn't watching this—we'd all get dosed for sure.

“Hey, Mr. Welsey. What's going on?” Theo was at my shoulder. He moved forward a little bit, so that his shoulder was just barely in front of mine. I stepped back slightly, and thought about moving forward a little bit myself, just so  _ he _ was the one who had to step back, but decided I didn't want to get that close to P. Jonas and her minions—there was something about the speculative way they were looking at me that made me nervous. 

The woman turned to look at Theo and then beyond him to the rest of the students who were all standing behind him, equally curious. She scanned the rest of the cafeteria—which I noticed had gone quiet—before she stepped past all of us and, in a voice that carried easily to the far corners of the room, said, “All right. Everybody listen up.”

Behind her the man she had called Webb snapped to attention, his legs coming together almost audibly. His hand opened and then closed at his side, almost as if he were missing something. Then P. Jonas moved to the center of the room, and my attention was back to her.

“Students of Solanan High. Hello. My name is Dr. Dora Jonas, and I have some wonderful news for you. I have been authorized by the National Department of Health to administer one dose of my new flu vaccine, Omniflu, to each and every one of you here at Solanan High, free of charge. This is an incredible opportunity for you: imagine, never getting the flu—any flu—ever again.”

There was a buzz of voices all around us as her words registered. So far this year the flu had hit Solanan pretty hard—some days as many as half of my classmates were out sick.

“And so,” Dr. Jonas raised her voice, and the room quieted immediately. It was funny the way some people could do that. “If you would just stop by my table on your way out of the cafeteria, you can get your free shot and be on your way.” Here she gestured to the doorway, where two  _ more  _ people in uniform were busily setting up a small table and a cot. Another one carried in an ice chest with that medical symbol, the serpent-entwined staff, on the side. He set it down on the floor by the table and then took up a position next to it, clearly guarding it, while yet  _ another _ uniformed man came in carrying a portable screen. 

Just how many people did they need to administer a  _ flu _ shot? Dr. Jonas turned and walked back to the table. I could hear the students talking to each other under their breaths, clearly excited. Whatever; I was out of here. This seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would tie up the rest of the school day, leaving me free to ditch the rest of my classes and get to work early. Not only would that mean another few hours on my paycheck, it also meant I got a head start on the enormous pile of dishes that always awaited me. My boss was too cheap to hire a daytime dishwasher, so every cup, every plate, every spoon that had been used from the time the restaurant opened for breakfast at six am to the time I got there at four would be waiting for me in a greasy pile. Toss in all of the pots and pans the cooks had managed to burn throughout the day and it added up to one ginormous pile of dishes.

That's what I was thinking about as I pushed past the few students who had come up and started to form a line.  _ Some people would get in line for the Apocalypse _ , I thought. I had made it all the way to the door when one of the uniformed men—Webb—moved to stand in my way.  _ This _ was getting tiresome.

“Going somewhere?” P. Jonas was at his side.

“Yes. I'm going to class.”  _ A lie _ .

“Classes will be delayed while the flu shot is being administered.”

“I don't want the flu shot.”

“Too bad. It's mandatory.”

I suddenly had a vision of my mother, blonde dreadlocks flying, hands on her hips, responding to just such a statement when she had first enrolled me in kindergarten twelve years ago. “Unless the laws have changed in the last five minutes,” she had said, “the State of Colorado allows individuals to be exempt from vaccination requirements if they have strong religious, moral, or philosophical reasons for doing so. Therefore, my child is exempt.”

The school secretary had looked at her over the top of her glasses and then glanced down at the enrollment form in her hand before leaning over the desk to look at me. “Is that true, Aurora? Do  _ you _ have strong “religious, moral, or philosophical” reasons for not wanting to be vaccinated?”

I had squared my shoulders, tossed  _ my _ dreadlocks, and said, “It's Addie. And I'm 'xempt.” I could still feel the warmth of my mother's hands on my shoulders as she had squeezed them proudly.

The dreadlocks were now long gone, as was my mother, but I still tossed my hair as I said, “I'm exempt.”

Suddenly Mr. Welsey was at my side. “Ah, yes, I'm afraid that's true. Ms. Roamer has a form on file in the nurse's office stating her objections to vaccinations. I'm afraid we'll have to skip her.”

P. Jonas looked like she wanted to order the sergeant to drag me over to her table, but instead she smiled and said, “Are they  _ your _ objections, Ms. Roamer, or those of your parents? Because surely you're old enough by now to make your own decisions? I mean, what  _ possible _ reason could you have for wanting to turn down an offer of lifelong immunity to every single flu strain that's out there? Imagine: never getting sick again.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, smiled her own fake smile back at her, and said, “Well, for one thing, it sounds like bullshit. I mean: how do you know it confers lifelong immunity if it's just been invented?”

Her tone could not have been any more condescending as she said, “I'm sure the science of immunology is well beyond you, Ms. Roamer.”

Again, I matched my tone to hers. “Then put it in terms I  _ can _ understand. For instance: if it's new, how do you know that it confers a lifelong immunity?”

She looked slightly amused as she said, “None of the recipients have ever developed the flu, I can assure you.” Her lips twitched, almost as if she were trying to hold back a smile.

“And you followed up with them for their  _ entire lives? _ ”

P. Jonas was silent for so long that I thought she was going to ignore the question. Finally though, she spoke. “No, of course not. Like you said, it's a new vaccine. In order to follow its recipients for their entire lives they would all have to be dead now, wouldn't they?” The man next to her started to laugh. She whipped around and shot him a look that instantly quelled him. He snapped to attention again, and P. Jonas lifted up her clipboard. She made a great show out of running her finger down the list of names, stopping at about the halfway point. “Very well. As you said, you are exempt. You may go, Ms. Roamer.” She looked at my name more closely, and then smiled broadly. “I mean,  _ Aurora Dawn _ .” I stiffened at the use of my full name, and the students around me snickered knowingly. Se made another big show out of crossing my name off of the list before she stepped aside to let me pass.

As I went I was tempted to let my elbow bump against the clipboard and knock it to the ground, but something stopped me, and it wasn't the men who were standing by the door. In the same way that the coloring of certain poisonous creatures warns away their enemies, there was something about P. Jonas that just seemed to tell me to back off. So instead of provoking her further I walked out the cafeteria door, turned left, and headed for the parking lot. I didn't even bother to stop by my locker to pick up my books. What was the point? It wasn't like I had any intention of doing any homework this weekend anyway.

 


	4. Chapter 4

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Chapter Four: Theo

 

I watched Addie walk away. I was tempted to run after her and try to explain about the cake, but thought better of it. Not once in the last nine months had any of my overtures toward Addie been received with anything but scorn—why should today be any different? Besides, I didn't think that I would be allowed to claim “exemption” like Addie had. And so, like everyone else, I got in line.

Shitzi got in line behind me and started to talk about “the game.” I wasn't even sure what game he was talking about, but that didn't seem to matter to Shitzi: as long as I said, “mmm,” and “true” and “oh, yeah,” every so often Shitzi seemed satisfied. Chuck and Isabel were right behind me, but they were hardly even coming up for air, let alone talking, so for all intents and purposes I was alone with my thoughts. That being the case I thought about my upcoming party and how much I was dreading it.

It had really been my mother's idea, as a way to appease Isabel. Most kids, I knew, would be thrilled to have a mother who not only tolerated parties, but planned them. She had even arranged to have it catered—all I had to do was stop by Enrico's and pick up the platters she had already ordered. She wouldn't be too happy with Shitzi's keg, but that was just because she thought beer was low class. I would bet anything that when I got home today I would find that the liquor cabinet was fully stocked with a Post-it note stuck to the front of it that read “Have fun!”

I wondered, yet again, what it was that kept Isabel and my mother from being close. Was it because they were  _ so _ much alike? Whatever the reason, Isabel had always craved our mother's attention, something that had never ceased to baffle me. Didn't she realize that it was when the laser eye of our mother's attention was turned on you that she was most likely to try and change you? Of course if she had ever paid any attention to Isabel she wouldn't find anything that needed changing: Isabel was practically her clone. The same narcissism, the same superficiality. I watched her now, covertly, as she allowed herself to be groped by Chuck. 

He was starting to breathe hard, whispering what he clearly considered to be enticements in her ear. She responded with a giggle and a scolding, high-pitched “Stop!” but despite the sound of her voice she wasn't really there. I caught her eye, and in it I saw nothing: no passion, no love—not even amusement. It was like looking into the cold flat eye of a snake. Or a corpse. She opened her mouth to say something to me and I could tell by the way she pulled back her lips into a sneer that it was going to be something cruel. In this, too, she was just like our mother.

At that moment, however, Cheri Sellers came up and slid her arm through mine, and Isabel closed her mouth. Cheri was the captain of Isabel's cheerleading squad, and no matter what, Isabel recognized when someone had social power. Again, just like our mother.

“Hello, lover,” Cheri said to me, and Shitzi snickered. Cheri shot him a look that would have pierced steel—and should have sent him running for cover—but he just grinned back at her. Cheri and Shitzi, I had always thought, would have been  _ perfect _ together. Too bad that one was my friend, and the other my girlfriend. Actually, I wasn't quite sure how either situation came to be: while Shitzi was nice enough, and for the most part, harmless; he really wasn't interested in much beyond graduating high school, going to some college, getting some degree, and marrying some girl (specifics were not important—the vision of his future wife was just another blank to be filled in).

And Cheri—I wasn't really sure how exactly she had come to be my girlfriend. One day last fall she had just shown up at the house to show Isabel some cheer routines. Once my mother had found out that she was the captain of the squad she had maneuvered the two of us out the door and down the hill to dinner at Enrico's, and somehow, after that, we had become an item. Perhaps it had been discussed at dinner. I wasn't entirely sure, because the whole time we had been at Enrico's my attention had been on the swinging door that led into the kitchen. Every time it swung open I could catch a glimpse of Addie washing dishes. The steam from the dishwater had made her dark hair curl beguilingly against the side of her face and her t-shirt cling tightly to her skin. When she had reached up to grab a drink from the shelf above her head I had clearly seen the dusky outline of her nipples through the white of her shirt. At that moment it was all I had been able to do not to storm into the kitchen, lift her onto the edge of the sink and press my mouth to her breast. In my fantasy she had clutched the back of my head, thrown back her own, and moaned my name. Back in reality I must have grabbed at the edge of the table with my fingers, because the next thing I knew a glass of ice water had tilted over and spilled across the table and into my lap, causing me to jump up with a shout. At that Addie had looked up and caught my eye in the moment before the door swung shut again. I had heard the crash as the drink she was holding had slipped from her hand.

“Theo?”

The memory fled as I looked down to find Cheri looking up at me expectantly. “I'm sorry,” I mumbled, “did you say something?”

“I  _ said  _ 'do you know how many calories are in a flu shot'?”

I resisted the urge to reach up and rub my temples. “Why would there be any calories in a flu shot?” I asked, trying to be patient. Cheri always claimed that I was “short” with her.

She rolled her eyes. “Weren't you listening? Zane was just telling the woman in charge that he couldn't get flu shots because he was allergic to eggs, and she let him go. So that means that there are  _ eggs _ in flu shots? Gross. I'm not spending an extra twenty minutes on the StairMaster tonight because I had to get some stupid flu shot.”

I looked at her and tried to decide whether or not she was serious. The thing about Cheri was that every minute of her life was an act—the dumb blonde, the bitchy cheerleader, everything. Even her role as my girlfriend was an act. The truth was that I didn't even think Cheri liked boys. I had seen her looking at the members of her own squad in pretty much the same way most guys looked at them. That was fine with me—I actually didn't mind being her beard—it just would have been nice if she could have been honest with me. At least that way we would have been able to laugh about it together. And I would have known the difference between when she was being genuine and when she was putting on an act. Like now.

“I think they just use eggs to grow the vaccine. There's no actual egg—or calories—in it at all.”

We all looked at Chuck in amazement. How had he known that? He grinned at us, and then went back to making out with Isabel, and I was struck once again by what pains we all took to hide who we really were.

“Name?” The woman was standing in front of me, clipboard in hand.

“Theo Frank.”

She ran her finger down the list. “I have a P. Frank and an I. Frank. Which one are you?”

“P. Frank.”

She looked up at me. “How does one get 'Theo' from a name that starts with 'P'?”

I looked at her name tag—P. Jonas—and remembered what she had said to Mr. Welsey. “Probably the same way that someone gets 'Dora' out of it.”

She blinked. “Well, P. Frank, you're next.”

I stepped forward and went behind the partition. I was surprised to see that three of the men I had seen before were already there, one with a tray of what looked like surgical instruments, one with a tray of needles, and one doing what looked like nothing at all, just standing at ease with his hands behind his back. “Why is the military giving out flu shots?” I asked the man nearest me.

Before he could answer the woman came up behind me. “Omniflu is a joint project between the Department of Defense and the Center for Disease Control,” she said. “But these men are not part of the military. They work for a private firm—Shelley Security Services.”

I looked at the insignia on their uniforms—a black triangle with a red “S” in each point. A security service? That made even less sense. “I thought you said you worked for the Department of Health.”

Again, she blinked. “I do. Now please lie down.”

I looked at the cot she was pointing to. There was a chair right next to it, and I moved toward that. “I'm pretty good with shots. I don't think I need to lie down.” The soldier—security officer, I corrected myself—who had been “at ease” came to attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman shake her head, and he assumed a more relaxed posture again. She stepped up and put her hand on my elbow, steering me back towards the bed.

“This is a series of shots, and for some people the multiple injections can become slightly painful. Please: lie down now.”

I had a bad feeling about this. I thought about what Addie would do—what Addie  _ had _ done—throw a fit until she got her way. I could do that too, I supposed, but then Mr. Welsey would probably end up getting involved, and maybe even my parents. And then I'd have to listen to my mother's long harangue about not causing trouble, and setting an example, and then, if it went on long enough, she might actually start to  _ notice _ me, and what I was wearing, and the paint beneath my fingernails, and ask me if I was still wasting my time  _ painting _ when I could be spending my time so much more productively, and who knows, maybe then my father would get involved, and college would come up, and—

I lay down on the bed.

P. Jonas sat in the chair next to me. “Lift up your sleeve, please,” she said, her tone indicating that the “please”didn't make it any less of an order. I pushed up the sleeve on my t-shirt and she wiped down the injection site with an alcohol swab. The security agent next to her handed her a needle, and she quickly jabbed it in my arm. Almost instantly my arm started to go numb.

“What?” I started to say, but then the nausea hit me. I had dislocated my shoulder last year, and before the doctor had pulled it back into place he had given me a sedative. It had made me so sick that I had completely forgotten about the pain in my shoulder, which, I supposed, was what it was supposed to do. This was obviously the same sedative.

I turned my head and tried to concentrate on not throwing up. Although my arm was numb I could hear as syringe after syringe was deposited back on the tray. Then there was a tugging on my arm, and I looked over in time to see P. Jonas paint something clear over a small incision. She saw me looking at it and smiled at me brightly: I was reminded of a predator. “All done,” she said as she put her hand under my elbow and helped me to my feet. Her voice was so falsely bright and cheery that I half expected her to offer me a lollipop.

The next thing I knew I was standing in the cafeteria, rubbing my arm and trying to clear my head. All around me people were complaining about how much the “shot” had hurt; nobody else seemed to have noticed the incision part of the procedure. I pushed up my sleeve and looked at the site: it was red and ugly, and starting to swell. Because of that swelling, and the nu-skin P. Jonas had painted on, the cut was nearly invisible.

There was a crowd of complaining students gathered around Mr. Welsey. Some were complaining about the pain in their arms, others about feeling hot, or, like me, about the nausea. Mr. Welsey was handing out yellow passes excusing students from the rest of the day's classes as fast as he could; I waded into the fray and grabbed one for myself, then went back and grabbed another one for Addie. If I knew her she had left school as soon as she had gotten out of the cafeteria. She would probably crumple up the pass and throw it in my face, but at least it gave me a chance to interact with her. Sometimes I thought that our daily sparring was the only thing that kept me sane, gave me a reason to keep my wits sharp and show up at all.

By the time I got to the parking lot my nausea had passed, and I was just left with a throbbing arm. I remembered then that I had left my jacket back in my locker, but decided against going back in for it—if anything, I was starting to feel too warm in my t-shirt as it was.

I drove the three blocks downtown to Enrico's, figuring I could kill two birds with one stone: I could pick up the platters for “my” party tonight, and I could drop off Addie's pass. But when I got there I didn't see Addie's bike behind the dumpster where she usually stashed it. I considered driving back home and then coming back to get the platters later but decided against it. I was starting to get a throbbing headache, and my neck felt a little stiff. I parked out front and went inside.

There was no one in dining room of the restaurant. I stepped back into the kitchen, and saw an older Hispanic man putting the last touches on my order. “Is Addie here?” I asked him, even though I knew she wasn't.

“No. She go home. Come back later.” He smiled at me and gestured to a three-compartment sink—the one I had seen Addie standing at last fall—and I saw that it was full of dirty dishes waiting in cold, greasy water. There were even more dishes piled on the floor next to the sink. I was thinking about putting the pass somewhere on top of the pile when the owner, Rick (“Enrico” to the tourists), walked in. He saw me looking at the pile of dishes and grinned.

“Not bad, eh? I just let them pile up during breakfast and lunch; I only have to pay for one dishwasher a day that way.”

His voice had a conspiratorial tone to it: one rich guy sharing the secrets of his success with another. I grunted non-committally and he stepped around me to snap at the cook. “Arturo: finish those up and get started on tonight's prep work.”

“Yes, sir.” The cook looked at me now and his face was blank—the smile he had had for me earlier when I had asked about Addie was gone, replaced by blank—and false—subservience. I realized that Rick was talking to me and turned back toward him.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“I said, 'do you feel all right?' You look a little rough.”

I reached up and pushed my hair back off of my forehead, noticing as I did so how hot my forehead felt. “Yeah, I'm okay,” I said. “We just got these shots at school today, and I think I'm having a little bit of a reaction to it.”

“The new flu shot, right? Addie mentioned it.”

“She was here?”

“Yeah, she came in. Said she wanted to get a jump on the dishes, this being a Friday night and all, but I figured with all the people leaving town for the property tax vote, and nobody coming in because of the construction, this place will be like a ghost town. I told her to come back later tonight.”

“Addie didn't get the shot.” I said.

Rick snorted. “I know. She was going off about 'heavy-handed government tactics' and 'organized guinea pigs.' That girl's a real firecracker. Still, I'm not used to hearing that kind of hippie talk from  _ her _ . I guess it's true what they say: eventually, every girl turns into her mother.”

“Addie's not her mother.” The dull ache just in back of my eyes made my words come out sharper than I'd intended, but Rick just laughed.

“Whatever. Didn't mean to insult your  _ girlfriend _ , eh?” He slapped me on the shoulder, and I nearly dropped to my knees from the pain that shot down my arm. I heard a snarl and realized with shock that it had come from my own throat, and that my hands had shaped themselves into claws. I wanted to tear Rick apart.

The cook took one look at me and backed up. Rick had his back to me, and didn't notice anything. He said something to the cook, but Arturo was too busy staring at me to listen. Rick put his fingers in front of his face and snapped at him like a dog.

“Hey! I said 'put these out in Mr. Frank's car.'”

The snaps seemed to shake both of us out of it: I felt my hands relax and my anger dissipate, and Arturo piled all of the platters into one stack and headed out the door. By the time I got to my truck the platters were all resting neatly on the floorboards in front of the passenger seat. I looked around, wanting to give Arturo some sort of a tip, but he was nowhere to be found. In fact, there was nobody on the street at all. It looked like Rick was right: this place was going to be a ghost town tonight.

 


	5. Chapter 5

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Chapter Five: Addie

I rode my bike toward the end of town, mentally cursing Rick. Why couldn't he just let me start my shift early? If, like he said, the restaurant was going to be deserted tonight then why not let me come in—and leave—early? He had told me that he didn't want me milking the clock, but I wasn't sure that I agreed with his definition of “milking.” If working at a normal human pace—instead of frantically trying to keep my head above water, as usually happened—meant “milking” the clock, then yes, I had intended to milk it. Cheap bastard. Oh well—at least I had been able to go through the Solanan Free Box.

The Free Box wasn't actually a “box” at all, but rather a set of cubbyholes outside the post office where people could leave stuff they no longer wanted and look for stuff they needed. It was one of the last vestiges of Solanan's hippie past, from the times after the mines had closed for good but before the ski lifts went up. That was before my time, actually, but my dad still talked about it. As had my mom—when she had still been around.

There was talk now about getting rid of the Free Box—it was “too messy,” according to some people. The same ones, I suspected, who had helped pass the new town laws banning “indoor furniture used outside” (porch couches) and “non-running vehicles parked anywhere other than in an enclosed garage” (junkers up on blocks in the front yard). If certain members of the town council had their way there would be a law banning anyone under a certain income from residing within the city limits. “Bring us our coffee, and then wash the cup, but don't even  _ think _ about trying to live here,” the law would read. “That's what trailers down in the Valley are for.”

Of course, if that law ever did come to pass they'd end up regretting it at times like these, when the town was cut off from the outside world. Already half the kitchen staff at Enrico's (the half that did live in trailers in the Valley) had called in, unable to get to work because of the construction.

I glanced down at the stuff in my bike basket that I had scored from the Free Box. There was a pair of nearly new hiking boots that only  _ slightly  _ reeked of skunk (size 12), a single glove, and a ratty old Barbie doll with one missing arm.

The shoes were for my Dad (he wore size 11, but hey, free is free), the glove was for my glove collection, (I had been collecting orphan gloves for the last ten years, trying to see if I ever found a pair that matched—so far, no), and the Barbie was for our kitchen at home. Actually, all I really wanted was her head, but it would have been rude to leave a headless  _ and  _ armless Barbie behind.

Thinking about my plans for the Barbie head, I didn't notice the crunch of wheels on gravel coming up behind me until there was a bike practically on either side of me. And when I did notice it was too late to do anything about it: Shitzi was pedaling fast to catch up with me on my left, while Chuckie was coming up hard on my right. I could have tried to outrun them but it would have been futile: they were on twenty-one speed Bontragers and I was on my free wheel Cannibal, a bike that

had gotten its name from the fact that it had a Cannondale frame, Black Diamond forks, and Gary Fisher rims. That's what happened when your Dad built customized bike frames for a living—you got to ride scraps.

I slowed down to let them catch up, taking a little pleasure in the fact that even with twenty-one gears they were sucking wind next to me as we all headed up the hill out of town. Finally, though, Chuckie was abreast of me; he reached into my basket and pulled out the glove.

“Shopping at the Poor Box again?” he said. “Looking for a present for you  _ boyfriend? _ ”

God, was I ever sick of that joke. You'd think that after nine months people would let it drop, but it just seemed to get funnier over time.

To them.

I pulled the glove out of Chuckie's hand. He wobbled a bit on his bike and fell behind. Shitzi reached out then and grabbed the Barbie, shaking her at me.

“Is this your new friend?”

Shitzi really wasn't very good at this whole “being a dick” thing; sometimes I kind of felt bad for him, being stuck hanging out with Chuckie and all, because because being a dick was practically Chuckie's raison d'etre. That was French. It meant “reason to be.” I learned that last year in French class, before I had dropped out of French and started taking welding instead. Welding class sucked—thanks to my dad's work I already knew most of what they were teaching—but at least in welding class nobody tried to talk to you about college.

Shitzi tossed the Barbie back into my basket just as Chuckie caught up with us again. Shitzi looked at Chuckie, and then at me, and then his eyes lit up in delight as he looked back at Chuckie again. “Hey Chuck, guess where I got up this morning? At Aurora Dawn's  _ crack _ .” He nearly fell off his bike laughing at his own joke—the only joke I was even more sick of than “Addie's boyfriend.” Suddenly, I wasn't feeling so sorry for him any more.

The road dipped down to pass through a small creek and we all picked up speed. I grabbed the Barbie by her head, bent down, and stuck her legs into the spokes of Shitzi's front tire. Her head popped off as the legs stopped his bike dead in its tracks; I narrowly missed him as he flew over the handlebars and landed with a sickening thud face first on the road in front of us. Chuckie stopped—hopefully to help him, although why I cared I wasn't quite sure. Before I got too far away I made sure I shouted back over my shoulder, “By the way: it's 'I woke up at the  _ crack of _ _ dawn' _ —asshole. ”

 

* * *

 

After leaving Chuckie and Shitzi cursing behind me I got serious about riding: I still had to climb two-hundred and forty vertical feet to get back home. I had two choices. I could either ride the road that switch-backed up the mountain for a mile and a half or I could take the trail that went straight up a drainage for less than half of that. Short and brutal, or long and . . . well, pretty brutal, too, on a bike with no gears. I decided that the extra weight in my basket (the boots, mainly) would make the drainage too problematic, especially the parts where I had to bunny hop over boulders and logs, and resigned myself to taking the road. Oh well: at least I wouldn't have to worry about running into Theo's mother—I had heard her leave early this morning, before I left for school, and after she had had her screaming match with Isabel.

If Gabrielle Frank had any idea how well sounds carried down from their house to ours I was sure that she wouldn't let a little thing like the law get in the way of pushing us out. In fact, she would probably drive the bulldozer herself, that was how much she despised us. And had despised us, ever since she realized that the collection of trailers just below her multi-million dollar home had a legal right to be there because of a little known law called “Adverse Possession.” What that meant was that all of the years my dad had spent squatting—living illegally—on the edge of the Frank's land amounted to outright ownership in the eyes of the law. My grandfather had known that, which is why, after his one and only visit twenty years before, he had given my dad the only piece of good advice my dad had ever followed in his life, “Just make sure you pay the taxes, boy, and there's nothing they can do.”

Which turned out to be true. And which also turned out to be the thing that drove Gabrielle Frank over the edge from merely disliking us to outright loathing us. And while the courts had ruled against her attempts to evict us, and my dad had laughed in her face at her attempts to buy us out, it didn't mean that she was giving up on getting rid of us. She made sure the plow they hired in the winter left a four foot wall of ice in front of our turn-off, pointed her outdoor speakers down the hill, rather than up toward the house, and called the county code violation hotline so often that she probably had it on speed-dial. (Luckily for us, it turns out that it's not illegal to live in a couple of run-down travel-trailers in the woods, even if the only toilet you have is an ancient composting one built into an outhouse out back, your water is brought up by the bucketful from the river, and your only heat comes from a pot-bellied wood stove. And, of course, the electric blankets you plug in to the extension cord you've run through two-hundred feet of conduit ending at the Frank's back wall. Yeah, okay:  _ that _ part was probably illegal.)

I glanced over at our place now as I turned off the well-maintained road leading up to the Frank place and onto the barely passable road leading up to ours. I could see sharp flashes of blue light coming out of the largest trailer and knew that Dad was still busy with his latest order: a custom-built bike with an absolutely  _ ginormous _ twenty-four inch frame. It was for some basketball player in Arizona.

I grabbed the stuff out of my basket and headed into the silver Airstream in the middle of the compound, the second largest after my dad's welding shop. It was our “kitchen/dining/living room” trailer. I put the shoes on the table, tossed the glove into a footlocker brimming with others, and took a moment to erase and rewrite the tally written on a nearby chalkboard so that it read left—102, right—216. Finally I carried the Barbie head over to a sign my dad had salvaged from a therapist's office a few years before which read, “Today I'm feeling ___.” I took down the empty box of Friskies that was leaning up against it and threw it on the woodpile. I was pinning the Barbie head up in its place when the door opened behind me and my dad came in. Without saying a word he went to the ice chest in the corner, pulled out a stick of butter, peeled off the wrapper and then pressed it to his forehead.

“Huh,” he finally said, admiring my handiwork. “And I thought I was the only one here who ever felt like a little head.”

“ _ Dad _ . That is such an inappropriate thing to say to your own daughter.”

He studied the head for a minute longer and then turned back to look back at me. There was butter dripping in his eye. “What? You're eighteen now, right? I can say that stuff.” He looked like he was doing math in his head—I could always tell, because his eyes crossed—before he slapped himself in the forehead (unfortunately, with the hand that was still holding the butter) and said “Shit! You  _ are _ eighteen now, aren't you? When was your birthday?”

I watched as more butter slid down his face and said, “Last week.”

He grabbed a paper towel and wiped off his face. “Sorry about that.”

“S'okay. It's a Hallmark Holiday anyway.” I shrugged, slightly confused. If he had forgotten, then who had sent the flowers to me at work? My mom? The thought of her made me scowl, which made my dad look even more remorseful

“No, it isn't,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. That's when I noticed that he only had one eyebrow; where the other one had been was an angry—and now, buttery—red mark.

“Nice eyebrow,” I said. “Where's the other one?”

He looked sheepish and ducked his head. “I had a little problem with the welder.”

I sniffed the air, and sighed. “Dad. You didn't try to light your bong with a torch again, didn't you?”

“Well . . .” He turned away from me and started looking through the cupboards. “So, what's for dinner?”

I took what remained of the butter out of his hand—there were a few stray hairs and a bit of something crunchy on it—and threw it in the trash. “Nothing with butter in it, obviously. Next time try some antibiotic ointment. It's really great here in the 21 st century—you should come join us.”

“No thanks—I've seen what a mess you people have made of things. If you ask mewe should have stopped at the wheel. A-ha! Ramen.”

“Actually, I think Ramen was invented  _ after _ the wheel. Technically speaking.”

He poked around in the cupboard a little more. “Okay, our choices are: ramen, mac'n'-” he looked closer at the box. “'Shreez?' What the hell is this?”

“Mac'n'shreeze. It's vegan.” I shrugged my shoulders. “It was free.”

“Is there nothing sacred? Free, huh? I can't imagine why. Anyway, there's ramen, mac'n' _ shreeze _ , and mystery can.” I saw that he was holding up a can with no label on it—one of the many we got from a friend of his who had the job of unpacking river trips. He always saved the mystery cans—the cans whose labels had been washed off—for us. I glared at the one my dad was holding suspiciously.

“No thanks,” I said. “I think I'll go with ramen; I still haven't recovered from that last can of Alpo you fed me.”

He tried to look offended—and failed. The missing eyebrow, of course, didn't help. “ _ That _ was corned beef hash.”

“You just keep telling yourself that, Dad—one day maybe you'll even believe it.”

 

I cooked up the ramen for us on an electric burner, adding some chopped scallions, mushrooms and hot sesame oil to make it palatable. I waited until my dad was finished and then I asked him, as casually as possible, “So. How's the bike going?”

Something about my tone must have betrayed me though, because he looked at me sharply and said, “Why?”

“Just wondering, that's all.”

He set down his bowl and then said, “I started over. The angle was off.”

This time I didn't even bother pretending to be casual. “You started  _ over? _ From scratch? How long will it be now?”

“I don't know.” He looked defensive. “Another two weeks?”

I put down my own bowl and pushed it away from me with a sigh. “Dad, he's been waiting for this bike for  _ six months _ . If it's not shipping like  _ tomorrow _ not only will we not get the rest of the money but we'll probably have to give him back his deposit, too.”

“So? What does this guy want with a custom-built mountain bike anyway? He's a  _ basketball _ player, for chrissakes. See, this is what happened when you started all that 'website' nonsense. Now I have to deal with people who don't have any idea what they're getting; I have half a mind just to cancel the order myself.”

I put my head in my hands. “Dad. It's  _ March _ .”

“So?”

I looked up to glare at him. “So, typically, March is followed by April.” He looked blank. “Taxes, dad. Taxes!”

He frowned. “What, again?”

I put my head back in my hands. “Every year.”

There was that one catch with our “free” land—it wasn't so free. Although the Frank's could probably pay their tax bill with the money they got from their couch cushions (well, maybe not; they  _ were _ going to the tax hearings, after all), for us they were a stretch.

Every year.

And once Gabrielle Frank learned that we had fallen behind on them all she would have to do was make the tax payment herself and our claim on the property would be nullified.

It was amazing what you could find out on the internet, if you were really motivated. I stood up.

“Where are you going?” my dad asked me.

“ _ I'm _ going to work,” I said, snatching the bowls off of the table. “ _ Somebody _ around here has to.” He looked glum, and I knew that I'd hurt his feelings, but I didn't care.  _ He  _ wasn't the one who was going to have to figure out a way to come up with two thousand dollars in two weeks—I was. Last year I had used all the money I had set aside for college to pay the tax bill—after I had realized that college was no longer one of my options it had been almost a relief to use up the money. This year, however, despite my working double shifts at Enrico's (when he offered them), we were still two thousand dollars away. 

I could always try and get another job, but there were two things standing in my way. One was that jobs were  _ really _ hard to come by in Solanan—every ski bum in the country wanted to live here. And the other was that I really was working just about as many hours as was possible already. If I worked any more either school or sleep would have to go. And I was just too stubborn to give up school; I might no longer have any chance of going to college, but I would be damned if I was going to be known as “Addie the Dropout” for the next twenty—or fifty—years.

As I was putting on my coat (it would probably be in the twenties by the time I got off work tonight) my dad came up and offered me his favorite headlight. A peace offering. I ignored it as I grabbed two gloves (one brown cashmere, the other blue thinsulate) and shoved them into my pocket; I didn't want to make peace. I wanted to hold a grudge.

“No thanks,” I said brusquely. “I'll use my bike light. Unlike some people, I prefer to see where I'm actually going, not where I'd like to be.”

 

I took the drainage into town; although it was dusk I knew the trail well enough to dodge any obstacles that were hidden in the shadows on the forest floor. I knew I would have to take the road home, however; there was a new moon tonight, and despite what I'd said to my dad, bike lights were absolutely useless on a dark trail. I sighed: once again, my spitefulness had bitten me on the ass.

When I got into town I was surprised to see that it wasn't nearly as deserted as I'd thought it would be. Not only were all the lift monkeys out celebrating their freedom from employment (at least until the river running season started in the valley), it looked like the bridge construction crew had also opted to stay on our side of the river tonight as well.

I heard the sound of shouting and looked down a side street, expecting to see some early evening drunks stumbling out of one of the bars. What I saw instead was a large group of very sober men dressed in the same uniform I had seen at the school earlier. There must have been a dozen of them, all working on something intently. I turned my head instinctively away from the blue flash of an arc welder. When I looked back I saw that they were busy putting security bars on the bottom windows of the Chalet, one of the smaller boutique hotels downtown. Weird. And also, none of my business, except for the fact that, had I known there was going to be a welding job available I would have applied for it, school or no school.

Especially now that I knew how much we needed the money.

 


	6. Chapter 6

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Chapter Six: Theo

This, I thought, was without a doubt the worst party I had ever been to in my life. The throbbing dance music Isabel had put on felt like it was trying to pound its way directly into my skull, and the strobe light she'd set up to pulse along to the beat only made matters worse. I knew I wasn't the only person who felt this way either: nearly a dozen people had come up to me already and asked if I had any aspirin. In fact, I'd already handed out (and taken myself) the better part of two bottles. Next I'd have to dip into my parents extensive collection of prescription painkillers.

The food I had picked up earlier sat untouched in the corner; only Shitzi's half-full keg of beer out on the deck seemed to be getting any action, and even that looked like it was coming mostly from Shitzi. It looked like he was trying to find a way to drink through the pain.

Not that I could really blame him: the brand new road rash he was sporting on the side of his face looked incredibly painful. Every now and then he would wince and reach up to it, only to come away with another piece of bloody gravel that had just managed to work its way up to the surface. I had asked about it when he arrived, but both him and Chuck had just grunted “Addie” and refused to say more, other than to mutter something about “your girlfriend” under their breath and head straight for the keg.

God, was I sick of that joke. Although not, I knew, nearly as sick of it as Addie must be. After all,  _ she  _ was the one who bore the brunt of it. That's because  _ she _ was the one that had been left standing, humiliated and alone, in the middle of the dance floor. By me.

_ If I could turn back time _ , I found myself thinking, yet again. Still, what if I  _ could  _ turn back time? Would I have done anything differently? After all, I had been  _ desperate _ to go to that summer art institute. And besides, even if I could have changed my part in everything that had happened there would have been no way that I could have changed all the rest: her grandfather dying, her mother leaving. Still, it had been hard to find out how bad Addie's summer had been, and even worse to realize that part of it, at least, was because of me. I wasn't used to being the bad guy.

I scooped up a handful of ice from around the keg and pressed it to my temple. It melted into slush almost immediately and dripped down onto my t-shirt. My breath puffed out in clouds as I stared at the wet mark. Huh—that was odd. Why wasn't I cold? I looked around then and saw that I wasn't the only one in shirt sleeves: almost  _ everyone  _ was, even though it was cold enough that we could all see our breath. True, a few kids—the ones who were talking and laughing—were wearing down jackets and hats, but the vast majority of us seemed to be not only impervious to the cold, but to fun as well. In fact, the vast majority of the party looked about as bad as I felt.

I rubbed my arm, and noticed others doing the same. Why, I wondered, did it hurt so badly? Had I maybe done something to it in lacrosse practice today? Had we even  _ had  _ lacrosse practice today? No, we hadn't. Today was Friday. Wasn't it? Yes, it was. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog that had descended over my brain. The pain that followed that move gave me a moment of clarity, and I remembered—we had all gotten the special vaccinations today. Well, almost all of us. Not Addie. Or Zane. He was one of the bundled-up kids, talking animatedly to Isabel over by the keg, while his awkward friend, Liam, stood next to him staring at the ground. Strange that she wasn't trying to give him the brush-off, although she did hardly seem to be aware of who was talking to her. She clutched her red plastic cup in her hand and stared at him blankly, like she was trying to figure out what he was saying. As I watched, the cup slipped out of her fingers and crashed to the ground. Zane laughed and jumped back out of the way of the splashing beer. Obviously Isabel had had enough; I was stepping forward to tell her that it was time for her to quit drinking when my own cup slipped out of my hand and crashed to the ground as well.

As if it was some kind of a signal red plastic cups everywhere started hitting the ground. It would have been funny if it hadn't been followed immediately by the people who had been holding the cups crashing to the ground themselves. I saw Zane reach out and catch Isabel as she fell, right before I saw the ground rushing up to meet me.

And then I didn't see anything anymore.

That's because I was dead.

 

At least that's what it felt like. My heart gave one painful lurch and then went still, and my vision dimmed to a tiny pinprick before it went out completely. The only way I knew I wasn't dead was that I could still hear everything going on around me—the shouts of concern, the panicked demands to “call 911!” the urgent pleas to “come on, snap out of it, man.” And beneath that, almost drowning those other sounds out, were the sounds that usually passed unnoticed: the scrape of a shoe against the wooden deck, the whisper of fabric as someone passed quickly through the curtained doorway and into the house, the static crunch of feet on carpet.

Then there was a terrifying sound: feral snarls and growls, full of hunger and rage. As my vision cleared and the feeling returned to my limbs once more I realized that the most desperate sounds were coming from my own throat.

I was filled with an inexplicable rage. It was like what I had felt earlier, at Enrico's, only this time it was multiplied by a hundred, a thousand. And together with the rage there also came hunger. Not a physical one, but a primal one. It was as if I needed to feed, but on a cellular level. And then I heard the screams.

My head snapped toward the sounds as if on its own accord, and I saw, in a darkened corner of the deck, Chuck and Shitzi kneeling over something on the ground. The smell hit me then, and I realized instantly what it was. Blood. Fresh blood.

My lips pulled back into a snarl and I bounded over to where they were. I saw that they had some kid named Jake—a home-schooler—down on the ground. His eyes had rolled back into his head from pain and terror, but he was still frantically trying to fight off his two attackers. He reached up to push Shitzi away from him and Shitzi snapped at him like a wolf. I heard a grinding crunch, and then a wet, tearing sound, and suddenly two of Jake's fingers were in Shitzi's mouth. Shitzi chewed twice and then gulped them down. Jake screamed again, a high-pitched squeal of terror, and Chuck went for his throat, shaking him back and forth until blood arced out across us all and Jake went quiet with a gurgling moan.

I pushed at Chuck to get at Jake's body. He grunted and moved over a little as he ripped chunks of meat from around Jake's windpipe. I was bending down to do the same when a sound off to one side made me look up.

It was Isabel. She was chewing on somebody's scalp, and the long blonde hair that was hanging out of her mouth had started to choke her. She gagged once or twice, and then, with an enormous gulp, managed to choke it down. Something about watching her swallow the blonde strands covered with blood brought back a memory for me, a memory of sitting at the dinner table with Isabel while she wolfed down her spaghetti when she was four.

I had been seven at the time, and the sight of it had been disgusting enough to turn me off spaghetti for the next five years. I looked at the boy in front of me, and then at Isabel.

Something inside of me clicked. What was I doing? I pushed myself away from Jake's body and looked around. All around me people were feasting on the struggling bodies of their fellow partiers. There was a small sound behind me, and I felt my head swivel toward it, my neck turning on its own. In the shadows near the edge of the deck Zane sat with his head on his knees, his arms around his legs, rocking back and forth while saying, “No, no, no.”

I walked toward him; my legs suddenly unsteady. It was as if once the urge to feed had left me, and I had to return to actually thinking about putting one foot in front of the other, I felt clumsy.

I sank down into a crouch in front of him and reached out my hand to touch his arm. I meant to say, “Don't worry Zane—it'll be all right.” What came out of my mouth, however, was more of a moan. It was like my tongue was receiving its instructions from my brain three seconds after I had sent them out. Like they were thousands of miles apart, and the echo of the commands were bouncing back and forth inside my skull, creating so much interference that all that came through was static.

Zane's head jerked up and he stared at me for a moment before he recoiled. “Please, don't,” he said. He looked one more time at me, and then at something over my shoulder. I turned, and saw Isabel coming up behind us, her face streaked with blood. I started to stand up to stop her when I heard Zane choke back a cry of fear, and then—nothing. I turned my head back and saw that he was gone. With a jolt I realized that he must have jumped off of the deck—the deck that extended on cantilevers out across the lip of the waterfall that crashed down for over two-hundred feet.

Isabel sniffed once, as if searching the air for his remaining scent, and then, without looking at me, turned back away.

I watched her go over to where Chuck and Shitzi were still bent over Jake. They had stripped his body of most of its flesh, and were chewing and swallowing methodically, even though I could see that their bellies were already starting to distend from the sheer amount of meat they had forced down their throats. Isabel pushed her way between them and put her head down and gave a jerk. When she sat back up I saw that she had a piece of Jake's intestine in her mouth and was chewing and swallowing it steadily, like an extended piece of gum.

I knew then that I had to get out of there. Now.

Once the thought entered my head it was like my legs had minds of their own, and before I knew it I was running out the front door and down the road, running as if my life depended on it.

My life.

That thought stopped me cold and my legs locked. My momentum, though, and the angle of the road, propelled me forward, and I found myself skidding along the road on my chin, my arms having remained motionless by my side as I fell. I rolled over onto my back and reached up to my face, trying to feel how seriously I was injured. I couldn't feel anything, though, so I took my hand away and held it up to see how much blood was on it. Surprisingly, the answer was: none. This was odd, as when I'd first touched my face I had heard the small  _ plink plink  _ of gravel landing on the road as it was dislodged from the wound. I put my hand back at my side and looked up at the stars—at this altitude the stars were like a carpet in the sky, a shimmering shawl settling over the shoulders of the world. Addie had always said that looking at the stars from up here was like looking at them eye-to-eye.

Addie. What was happening to Addie? I tried to think back to the party—to remember who had been transformed, and who had been consumed. Was Addie now roaming the streets of Solanan, looking for a victim, or was she a victim herself? I pictured her like Jake, helpless, torn apart, her frightened screams echoing along the deserted streets.

That thought—the thought of Addie being attacked—reignited my dormant rage, and I was on my feet, growling and snarling. I saw a flash at my waist and snapped at it, my teeth clicking together with an audible snap before I realized with chagrin that I had just tried to attack my own wristwatch. I tried to make myself calm down.

I lifted the watch up to my face and tried to depress the button that would illuminate the dial but my fingers refused to uncurl from the claws they had curved into. It didn't matter, though: I realized I could read the hands perfectly well in the dark.

It was 11:30. The question was, was Addie still at work, or was she home? The best thing to do,

I realized, would be to check both places, starting with her house first. I looked around and realized that I had run past the turn-off to her place in my mad dash down the hill. I turned around and headed back up; I had nearly gotten back to the turn-off when I heard the rest of my “party” on the road above me. They must have finished with the flesh back at the house and were now looking for more.

I stood in the middle of the road, trying to decide whether to move up toward Addie's trailer or down toward town. My brain—like my legs—felt sluggish when I was trying to make a decision that had nothing to do with my own survival, and so instead of trying to think about whether or not Addie was at work, or at home, I forced myself to think about what my my life would be like without her. I snarled once, a deep, guttural sound, and then I knew: she was at home. I ran back up the road, toward the turn-off to her trailer. Above me, I could hear them getting closer.

 


	7. Chapter 7

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Chapter Seven: Addie

What a night.

First, the place had been packed. You'd have thought that with the majority of the town's millionaires up in Denver protesting the tax increase Enrico's would have been dead. After all, seventeen dollar plates of spaghetti and eleven dollar California rolls weren't really typical fair for ski bums and construction workers. However, most of the other restaurants had shut down for the construction weekend, so when the munchies struck the two groups of partiers (they had managed to bond over their mutual hatred for the rich—the one thing rednecks and hippies could still agree upon), they had all headed to Enrico's.

Rick himself had been forced to help out in the kitchen, as had his daughter, to the chagrin of all involved. He had managed to burn himself three times before the night was through, and she had retired to his office after only two hours of helping me with the dishes, complaining that her head was killing her. Not that I had really minded when she left—not only was she part of Cheri and Isabel's annoying crowd, but toward the end she had been dropping as many dishes as she had been washing. Help like that I could do without, especially since it was Rick's policy that anything over one broken dish a night came out of your paycheck. That was why when my shift had finally ended a little after ten I had headed to Rick's office before I left for the night. I wanted to let him know that the three plates, two wine glasses, and one coffee cup that had been sacrificed during my shift were all the responsibility of Heather.

He wouldn't like hearing it, but oh well: that was enough breakage to wipe out half the money I had made that night. When I got to his door when I saw that there was a dark handprint on the doorjamb and low moaning coming from inside; I remembered last summer when I had barged into Rick's office to tell him that we were low on forks only to interrupt one of the bartenders on her knees in front of him, “negotiating” a raise. Well, hell. I certainly didn't want a repeat of that scene. I could always tattle on Heather tomorrow.

Before I left, though, I looked more closely at the handprint—there was something familiar about the stain. And then I held up my own hand and saw the cut I had gotten from the wine glass Heather had broken in the dishwater and then neglected to warn me about. Of course—that was blood on the door. Shit. What if that meant someone was hurt? I hesitated again, thinking back. Rick had been livid when I had interrupted him before. But, again: what if someone was hurt? After a few more seconds of internal struggle, conscience won out over cowardice, and I tapped the door softly with one knuckle.

The result was instantaneous—there was a crash as something heavy hit the door from the inside, followed by the sound of snarling and growling. It sounded like some sort of wild animal was trapped in there. As I stood there in shock there was another crash against the door—and then another. Just as I was starting to wonder how strong the door was a bloody fist came crashing through it at eye level, and then pieces of the door were being pulled off from the inside. Heather's face appeared in the opening and I was reminded irresistibly of that scene in  _ The Shining _ when Jack Nicholson uses an axe to break through the door between him and Shelley Duvall. Then Heather snarled at me and the image was lost: I would much rather have been facing Jack Nicholson. 

Heather was insane. She must be. How else could you explain how she could be completely oblivious to the fact that every time she lunged forward the sides of the broken door were gouging out chunks of flesh from her face—gouges that went all the way down to fat and muscle and yet barely bled. Her skin, where it was being torn off, was pale and chalky, and her eyes—her eyes were completely black. The only part of her face that had any color to it at all was her lips, which were full and red. Against the paleness of her skin they made her look like some kind of 20s era movie star. And then she opened her mouth to snap at me and I saw that the reason her lips were so red was because of all the blood.

She pulled her face back out of the hole with a jerk, leaving chunks of her blonde hair dangling from the splintered wood of the door. I could see inside the office now, and saw that Rick was lying on top of the desk. He, too, was covered in blood and was clutching at his stomach. It looked like he was trying to hold in an armful of snakes. I stepped closer for a better look, and in the sickening moment before I realized that what he was holding in were his own eviscerated intestines I could have sworn I heard the sound of blood dripping onto the carpeting. Then Heather's arm shot out of the hole and grabbed my throat, and all I could hear was the sound of my own screams.

Her grip was incredibly strong; if I hadn't already been instinctively moving backwards at the sight of Rick trying to hold in his own guts she probably would have been able to hold me there with one hand. As it was I was just able to pull free. That was when I heard footsteps coming up behind me and turned to see one of the line cooks, an older guy named Arturo. He had a gun in one hand and without hesitating he lifted his arm, put his other hand beneath his elbow, carefully took aim, and shot Heather in the face. While I was still in shock from that he kicked open the door to the office and shot her again where she lay on the floor before he turned in a complete circle, scanning the rest of the room. Apparently seeing no one but Rick he stepped up to the desk, his gun at the ready.

“Please,” Rick said, and held out a bloody hand toward Arturo. Arturo looked at the hand, and then at Rick's wound. He put the muzzle of the gun up to the middle of Rick's forehead and pulled the trigger.

I must have made a sound because he whirled and pointed the gun at me. I froze.

_ “Si es usted morbido?” _ He spoke to me in a rush.

I had studied French, not Spanish, but I could guess from that that  _ morbido _ was the Spanish word for “bite.” “No,” I said. The word was stuck in my throat and wouldn't come out. I shook my head, and cleared my throat. “No,” I said again, this time audibly. That seemed to relax him some. He said something else to me in Spanish but it too quick for me to pick out any of the words. He looked at me for a moment and then held out one hand—the hand that wasn't holding the gun—palm up, as if he was asking me for something. “I don't understand,” I said. 

He smiled at me apologetically, and then said, “ _ Los cientos, _ ” before he turned and ran to the back door, slipping out of it and away so quickly I barely had time to realize that I had actually understood the last words he had said.

_ Los cientos  _ meant “I'm sorry.”  _ Oh no,  _ I thought. _ He's leaving me alone. _ _ This is bad—really bad. _

That's when the lights went out.

 

Any hopes I had that what had happened to Heather had been an isolated incident—despite the fact that Arturo had clearly already understood what was happening when he had run up with the gun—died along with the lights. I crept out to the dining room and looked out the front window, where I watched as a group of kids from my welding class cornered a pair of burly construction workers in front of a real estate office advertising million dollar shacks. The bigger of the two workers stepped forward and landed a shattering blow on the jaw of the kid in front of him—the same kid, I remembered, who had cried when he had gotten a “C” on his midterm project. The blow should have knocked that kid to the ground, but it didn't. Instead, it seemed to enrage him, and he launched himself at the worker, catching the man's fist between his hands before he sank his teeth into his knuckles. The man screamed, terrified, and the rest of the pack threw themselves onto the two workers, pushing them down to the ground and ripping at their skin with teeth and hands. I saw one of the kids pull something wet and shiny out of the melee and bite down on it. Blood squirted out from between his teeth, and I knew—although I didn't want to believe it—that he had just bitten into a human heart.

Where were the cops? I reached into the pocket of my jeans, pulled out my phone, and dialed “911.” I put the phone to my ear and heard nothing. I pulled it back down and looked at the screen: “call pending.” What did that mean? I turned it off and then on again, this time holding it up to the window to catch any light from outside. I dialed slowly and carefully, but the results were the same. I was putting it back into my pocket when there was a thump directly in front of me.

I looked up in time to see a bloody hand pull back and beat against the window again. It was one of the creatures—it was so hideous, with half of its scalp pulled back and hanging down over one eye—that I couldn't even think of it as a person anymore. It hit the window again, harder, causing the glass to vibrate lowly; the thing in front of me snarled from deep in its throat, the noise an ominous counterpoint to the hum of the window pane. I looked into its one visible eye and saw that it was the same as Heather's: completely black. And yet somehow it still managed to look  _ hungry. _ Pushing myself backwards on my hands and knees I got up and ran to the back door, the way Arturo had gone. Maybe, I thought hopefully, he was still out there.

I cautiously poked my head out into the alley but there was no one. Disappointed but not surprised, I moved as quietly as I could down to the dumpster where I'd parked my bike and looked behind it; thank God my bike was still there. I put my helmet on and reached for my bike light but then stopped, remembering how the light from my cell phone had attracted the creature to me back in the dining room.

I was starting to push my bike cautiously up to the end of the alley—my plan was to stick to the shadows and ease my way out of town—when I heard glass shattering from inside the restaurant behind me and realized it was time for Plan B: riding like hell. I hopped on my bike and slipped my feet into my toe clips; something told me I was going to need every bit of extra speed I could get.

Three hard strokes and I shot out of the end of the alley, my wheels whisper quiet on the pavement. Behind me I could hear the sound of footsteps running in the alley. I looked back over my shoulder just in time to see the same creature that had been pounding on the glass now in full sprint mode, chasing after me. It rounded the corner and went down hard, slipping on a piece of gravel that had migrated to the street, but it was up again just as fast. I pedaled harder.

I stuck to the middle of the street as I rode, afraid to get too close to any parked cars and what might be hiding inside them. Fortunately—or not, as the case might be—the streets were empty. Every now and then I saw movement off to the side, and would glance over in time to see another group of creatures devouring a victim, their grunts and squeals as they swallowed the flesh the only noise I could hear besides the smooth grind of my tires on the pavement and my own steady breathing.

And, of course, the sound of the pursuing feet behind me.

I put my head down and concentrated on dropping him just like I had with competitors when I still raced: I counted the rotation of my pedals in my head and every time I got to eight I increased my effort incrementally. Soon it was working, and I was out of town and on the road that led to my house—and, if necessary, out of the canyon.

As I came to the spot where I would have to choose between the road and the trail I slowed down and looked over my shoulder again—there was no sign of my pursuer. Given his doggedness up to now, though I doubted he had quit, and so I took the turn-off to the trail, figuring that he would continue on up the road after me.

I rode the first leg of the trail slowly; with no headlight and a moonless night I needed to be careful not only of obstacles like tree branches and rocks but also of things like wild animals that used the trail just as much as humans did. One night on his way home from the bar my dad had gotten tangled up with a skunk. The wreck had sent him headfirst into a tree. When he finally regained consciousness he had a broken collar bone, his bike had a broken fork, and the skunk was nowhere to be seen, although it had left the evidence of its displeasure all over both my dad and his bike. Something like that was exactly what I  _ didn't  _ need right now.

I came to the place where the trail became steep and rocky as it became less of a trail and more of a drainage and stopped. I carefully scanned the trees behind me, looking for any signs of my pursuer, but heard nothing. With shaking fingers I clicked on my light. I considered just keeping it off and pushing my bike up the trail, but decided against it: walking the trail would take half an hour, while it would take me only twenty minutes to ride. That ten minutes suddenly seemed like an eternity: I was desperate to get home to my dad. Not that he would have any solutions—other than “sit back, smoke a bowl, and wait for the cavalry,”—but just the thought of having some company for all of this was comforting.

I took one last look behind me—still clear—and started riding. I kept the light pointed down at the ground as much as possible, both to shield it a bit from view and to check for any obstacles on the trail. Although I had ridden this drainage so often I could probably ride it in my sleep I was always aware of the fact that it  _ was _ a drainage, and therefore subject to change. While the water that was in it now was still just a bare trickle it was more than enough to shift a boulder or two into my path. Hit one of them just right and I would not only be in for a spill, but I might just bounce far enough to slide into one of several rocky crevasses that also served as drainages all along the sides of this one. During the day they were easy enough to avoid, but at night they could be treacherous. 

I thought of the dead deer I had found in one once. The body had been several days old when I had stumbled across it wedged at the bottom of one of the deeper crevasses, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle, almost as if it had been looking over its shoulder as it fell. It had probably been chased there by the jackasses who rode their ATVs straight up the side of the canyon, oblivious to the trails. I had been glad to see that it hadn't suffered, especially since something had obviously stumbled upon it not long after its death and helped itself to the internal organs. Probably a mountain lion.

Thinking about mountain lions made me want to stop and look back down the trail, but I knew that the worst thing to do on a hard uphill like this one was to lose my momentum—if I stopped now I would end up pushing my bike the rest of the way.

And so I pressed on, bunny-hopping over the smaller boulders and using the larger ones to push off from. I was at a particularly technical spot when I heard the low growl. Instinctively I turned my head to look behind me, absurdly hoping that it was a mountain lion. It wasn't.

It was the same creature from before, only this time I could see who it was, since the scalp that had been dangling in front of his face had been pulled off. It was Tommy Parker, from my homeroom. Of course. He  _ would _ know to follow me up the drainage: we had come this way together once last spring to work on our joint science fair project. That had been before I had realized that things like science fair grades didn't matter, at least not to me. 

“Tommy, wait,” I said, but I could see that I had been right to think of him as a creature before; the thing in front of me was no longer Tommy. At the sound of my voice it lunged at me; I twisted hard to my left, instinctively putting my bike between it and me. This caused my front wheel, which had been about to drop down off the front of a large boulder, to slip sideways, and I went down hard on my knee, my feet tangled up in the toe clips.

I sucked in my breath at the pain that was radiating upwards from my kneecap and reached down to unfasten the clips. Tommy's body slammed into me then, the force of it pushing all three of us—me, Tommy, and the bike—over the edge of the boulder.

Into nothing.

At least that's what it felt like. I realized pretty quickly that we had fallen off into one of the larger crevasses, but that didn't stop me from panicking as we flew through the open air. Soon enough, though, my shoulder hit something hard, and then my head cracked up against a rock with enough force to rattle my teeth. Meanwhile, the creature that used to be Tommy Parker was trying to grab me, oblivious to the fact that we were both bouncing downhill through mud, and branches, and boulders.

Finally we came to a stop. I was slightly uphill from Tommy, who had been dislodged in the fall. My feet, thanks to the extra tug I had given the toe clips back in town, were still on the pedals.

The Tommy thing sat up then. The fall had not only ripped off more of its scalp but had also managed to dislocate its jaw, giving it an even more inhuman appearance than before. It moaned then, an eerie sound, and reached out a hand toward me. My vision swam, my head still spinning from the blow I had received, and in my confusion I foolishly thought it was asking for my help. I reached my own hand out toward it just as it jumped.

I don't know whether it was instinct or fear but my legs jerked up at that, bringing my bike between me and Tommy. Tommy's hand clutched around my chain ring, and as he started to pull I grabbed the handle bars and cranked on the pedals, pulling Tommy's fingers under the chain and into the chain guard. I heard at least one of them snap. I cranked on the pedals again and his hand was pulled even farther in, up to his wrist. Oblivious to what must have been excruciating pain, he used his other hand to pull the bike—and me—closer to his jaws.

I reached down and unhooked the strap on my right toe clip and kicked him in the face. His jaw moved over to an impossible angle and then swung back before it hung lank in front of him. While he was still adjusting to that I undid the other clip and scooted back, heedless of the mud and gravel I was collecting down the back of my pants. Tommy lunged after me but fell over the bike. He tried to stand up, but again the bike impeded him—down in the narrow, steep, crevasse the mountain bike on his hand was as good as a handcuff.

I scrambled up and out of the narrow gorge, checking back over my shoulder as I went to make sure that Tommy was still trapped. When I got to the top I was startled to see a light in front of me; I shied away from it in fear, nearly toppling backwards into the crevasse again before I realized that it was from my bike's own headlight—it must have been torn off in the fall. I leaned down and quickly switched it off before it could attract any more of the creatures,and then cautiously made my way up the rest of the trail.

I made it all the way back to our compound without incident. There were no lights on when I got there, but that wasn't unusual—we never left any lights on when we were gone, or asleep, and as far as I knew Dad was asleep in his trailer. At least he hadn't been planning on going down into town—like St. Patty's Day and New Year's he considered the weekend after the lifts closed to be “Amateur Nights,” occasions well beneath the notice of a serious drinker.

Picturing him now, snoring away in his bed, I was glad for perhaps the first time in my life that he was a “serious” drinker. Tonight, at least, it might have saved his life. Or at least saved him from a hell of a fright. Looking down at myself, I decided that I would do the same—I would get cleaned up before I woke him and told him the news. That way I wouldn't have to waste precious time in both explaining things  _ and  _ calming him down.

I went into my trailer and shut and locked the door behind me. Grateful for its comforting familiarity I checked to make sure that my curtains were securely closed and then turned on the bedside light. I wasn't surprised when it clicked on—our electricity came from the Frank's house, not the city. And they made their own. Bathed in the comforting circle of pilfered light I stripped off my filthy jeans, careful to avoid my tender knee where, just as I has expected, bruises were already starting to blossom from my fall. Pulling my shirt over my head I moved over to what had been the kitchen area when this had still been a travel trailer. There was a five gallon jug of water on the counter and I opened the tap and let some water run into the sink, sopping it up with a washcloth before I began to wipe the mud off of my arms and face. I knew that it was kind of stupid—after all, what difference did a little mud and blood make when my town was being overrun by zombies?—but I had always found that I was better able to think with a clean face. And what I really needed to do right now was think.

First off—zombies? Really?

No, of course not. Zombies didn't really exist. But there was certainly  _ something _ going on here. As upset as Tommy had been when I had dropped out of the science fair at the last minute, leaving him to finish on his own (and fail—even though I had done almost all of the work already), I really didn't think that he had been so upset that he would try to  _ eat _ me nearly a year later. He had been pissed, sure—and rightly so—but what I had seen down in the crevasse had been  _ rage. _

So: what  _ was _ going on? I opened up my closet—what had been the trailer's bathroom, before—and pulled out a clean pair of jeans and a new shirt. I plucked my favorite hiking boots off of the defunct commode and sat on my bed to pull them on, still thinking, but my thoughts, as usual, were swirling around in my brain too fast to catch them.

It was at times like these that I most missed Theo. His calm presence had always been the perfect foil to my manic energy, balancing it out and focusing it. Just as I had always been able to rouse him from his placid acceptance and into action. We had always been better balanced people when we were together.  _ That _ , I told myself, is what I missed the most. Then I remembered the feel of his unshaved chin rubbing against my own as he had slowly kissed my lips, and I knew that I was lying to myself.

What I missed most about Theo was Theo.

I put my head in my hands, and for the thousandth time whispered, “Why Theo? Why?”

A moment later I was on my feet, my heart hammering in my chest at the sound I had just heard. Someone—or some _ thing— _ was scratching at my door.

 


	8. Chapter 8

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Chapter Eight: Theo

I scratched softly on Addie's door, forgetting for a moment that with everything going on that might be a little creepy to her. I couldn't help it—back when we had still been friends that had always been my signal to her. Still, even though I knew it must have unnerved her, I wasn't prepared for the look on her face when she threw open the door and saw me standing there.

“No,” she whispered, her eyes horrorstruck, “not you.”

I stepped into her trailer, letting the door swing shut behind me; Addie backed away, shaking her head from side to side while her mouth formed a horrified “O.” She glanced around the room until her eyes landed on the lamp by her bed and then she quickly lunged over toward it. At least I suppose it was quickly. To me it seemed like slow motion. Anyway, soon enough it was in her hand; she gave a jerk, and with an audible pop it went out, leaving us in darkness. That was fine with me—I had been able to see the light almost as soon as I had stepped off the road. If the others had as well, they would soon be on their way. Besides, just like on the road, I found that the darkness didn't keep me from seeing. Unlike Addie. She swung the lamp out in front of her almost blindly and whimpered.

“Please don't make me do this,” she said.

Make her do what? I thought.

As if in answer to my thoughts she spoke again. “Please don't make me hurt you.”

And that's when I realized that, to her, I was one of them. Hell, to  _ me _ I was one of them. My breath came in short hard pants, as if I was readying myself to run a sprint, and my heart was beating wildly. And my night vision wasn't the only thing that was improved: I could also hear the shifting of pine needles in the trees outside, and on the way up to Addie's door I had realized that I could sense every movement in the forest around me. It reminded me of the time I had been on a climb with my father, on an ill-advised father/son bonding trip. I hadn't been nearly as good as he had hoped I would be and had ended up falling nearly thirty feet before my protection had caught me: in those first few moments afterwards, as I dangled upside down in my harness and stared at the valley floor fifty feet below, I had never felt so aware. Bird song half a mile away had been as crisp as if the birds had been right next to my ear, and I could see, as if with binoculars, a family gathered around their car in the parking lot far below, the father cupping his hands to peer inside the window at the keys that dangled from the steering column. 

What I was experiencing now was just like that, but whereas on the wall it had stopped after a few seconds here it just went on and on. Addie swung the lamp again. I wanted to tell her not to worry—actually, I wanted to tell her to tell  _ me  _ not to worry—but when I tried to speak all that came out of my mouth was a snarl. It was as if my tongue could no longer form the complicated movements that formed words. And then I heard, off in the distance, the sound of feet turning from the road onto the trail. And I knew that if I could hear them, they could hear us.

“Stay back,” Addie started to say, her voice ringing out like a bell.

Without even thinking about it I jumped forward and grabbed her. She started to scream and I clamped my hand down over her mouth, spinning her so that her back was pressed up against my chest. I put my other hand around her waist to hold her still. She struggled, but she was no match for me. Still, her feet were kicking out wildly, knocking over piles of books and mounds of clothes. I wrapped one leg around hers to hold her, and putting my lips to her ear tried to say, “Shh.” What came out, however, was a growling hiss.

She must have understood, though, because she quieted. Either that or her terror had finally overwhelmed her. I listened intently as the footsteps on the trail came closer and closer. And then I heard the sound of an engine as a car came up the road. Obviously the others heard it too, because their footsteps stopped and ran back toward the road. When I could no longer hear them I let go of Addie and backed away.

She immediately fumbled in her nightstand drawer for a flashlight. I listened again for the others, but couldn't hear them anymore; if they were that far away, then they wouldn't be able to see the light. I let her turn it on.

And then instantly regretted it.

She shone the light on my face and recoiled, stumbling in her haste to get away from me. I dropped my gaze to the floor, although it was hard to make myself look away from movement. Once I did, however, she took a step toward me.

“Theo?” she asked. I looked up; she took one look at my eyes and stepped back again. I dropped my gaze back to the floor. I waited one minute, then another. I spotted a filthy pair of jeans—I smelled the mud (and blood) before I saw them, actually—on the floor at my feet. And then I heard the soft noise of her shoe on the carpeting as she tentatively took another step toward me.

I almost leapt out of my skin when I felt her fingers on my chin. The instinct to fight, or to flee, was that great. Instead I forced myself to be still, marveling at how wonderful her fingers felt on my face, like the cool side of the pillow. Concentrating on that sensation, I let her lift my face up so that she could see my eyes.

This time she didn't recoil, but instead leaned closer. As she approached I could hear the sound of her blood running through her veins, the soft  _ lub-dub _ of the valves of her heart, opening and closing. I felt her breath brush my face, and I had to stop myself from leaning closer as well. Then I saw movement off to my side and jerked back, startled, before I realized that it was just her other hand reaching up to touch my face. I heard a growl, and realized with chagrin that it came from me. Addie, however, didn't seem fazed. “Hold still,” she said, her voice commanding. “Let me look at you.”

I stayed still. She lifted the flashlight up and shined it in my eyes. “Don't move,” she commanded, and I forced myself to obey, even though the light felt like it was shining all the way back to the edge of my skull. She quickly flipped the light away, and then back again. Again I jumped. “Easy now,” she said, and dropped her hand to my arm again. I stilled, not wanting her to remove it. I felt her thumb move down to my wrist, and I concentrated on that as she flashed the light back into, and then away from, my eyes again.

“Your pupils are enormous,” she said. “And they don't contract in the light at all.” She slipped her fingers around my wrist and counted softly to herself before she frowned and—slowly, cautiously, lifted her hand up to my chest. “May I?” she asked.

I wasn't sure what she intended but I nodded anyway—anything to keep her hand on me. She put down the flashlight and reached her other hand up to my chest as well. She then carefully laid her hand on me before she frowned and then slipped that same hand down inside the neck of my shirt, placing it directly over my swiftly beating heart.

It was an old t-shirt, and the gaping neck gave her plenty of room to maneuver. Although I knew that she was trying to feel  _ my  _ heartbeat, it was her pulse that I felt through the tips of her fingers. At first it beat rapidly, like a bird's, but then, as she pursed her lip in concentration, it slowed back down. I reached up and laid my own hand over the top of hers, through my shirt, and felt it speed up again. She looked up and into my eyes then, and I felt as much as saw her blush.

The effort it took then not to push her backwards, down onto the bed, was startling. I  _ wanted _ her, as badly as I had ever wanted her before, and that was saying something, because I had pretty much wanted her non-stop for the last year and a half. In its way my thoughts of lust were even more disturbing then my previous thoughts of feeding. I closed my eyes, ashamed, and afraid that she would be able to see what was in my head.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked me, concerned. I shook my head but didn't open my eyes. “Your heart is beating at almost two-hundred beats per minute,” she said. She moved her other hand up to my neck and I bit back a moan. This was torture. “And your skin feels so hot—I wonder what your temperature is?” I reached up and pulled her hands away from me, worried that if she left them there for one more second I would throw her back on the bed and tear her clothes off with my teeth.

“What's wrong?” she asked, and then I opened my eyes and she pulled back, obviously frightened by what she saw in them. “Oh. I didn't mean to make this harder for you. Is it very difficult, not to—eat me?”

I blinked. She had seen the hunger in my eyes and interpreted it as hunger for her flesh. As unpleasant a thought as that was I was at least glad that she hadn't seen what I was really hungering for. She kept talking. That was Addie—nothing ever shut her up.

“Did I really just say that? 'Is it very difficult not to eat me'? Theo, what the hell is going on here? What's wrong with you? With everyone?”

_ Not everyone. _ I thought.  _ Not her. _ I shook my head then and pointed at her.

“No,” she said, as if I had spoken. “That's true. Not everyone. Not Arturo. Not the construction workers. And not, I'm pretty sure, Rick.” I raised my eyebrows at her in question, and she added, “I don't  _ think _ Rick was affected, but I don't know. Arturo was pretty sure he was. Sure enough to shoot him in the head.” I must have looked shocked because she went on. “Theo, it's chaos down there. Packs of kids roaming the streets, attacking everyone they can find, and not a cop to be seen. Or called, apparently.” She sighed. “I don't suppose there's any chance you can speak, is there?”

I opened my mouth and tried to say her name but all that came out was a low moan. She held up her hand to stop me. “No, that's okay, this is creeping me out enough already. We can just go with 'strong but silent' for now.”

She looked into my eyes then, more deeply than before. “Are you really still in there, Theo?” she asked me softly.

I risked reaching my hand up to her face then, touching it softly as I nodded.

What happened next could have been a disaster: suddenly she threw herself forward into my arms. Before I had time to register what I was doing I had pushed her back on the bed, my hands in her hair, my lips at her neck. I felt her tremble beneath me and rolled over to the side.

“Sorry,” she said, breathlessly. “I didn't mean to—It's just that—I—I'm so glad you're here with me.”

I reached down and took her hand in mine and gave what I hoped was a gentle squeeze. She squeezed mine back in return, and I found myself wishing that we could just lay there forever. If the world really was ending I wanted it to end with Addie by my side. I turned to stare at her on the bed next to me, taking note of her thick brown hair that was spread across the rumpled sheets. (Addie never made her bed.) In the dim light her normally golden eyes were a rich amber. I stared into them for a moment longer, watching as they softened under my gaze. I glanced down to her lips then and saw a single drop of sweat in the hollow above her upper lip. It was too much for me, and I leaned closer, desperate to feel the cool softness of her lips beneath mine. Of course, that would be the moment she chose to jump up off of the bed.

 


	9. Chapter 9

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Chapter Nine: Addie

 

I needed to move away from Theo. Not to make it easier on him, although that was the fiction I was telling myself as I moved, but to make it easier on me. It just wasn't fair. His eyes looked like something out of a horror movie—his pupils were so large his eyes looked almost completely black, and the parts that weren't black were so bloodshot that they seemed like almost solid red. His chin had a large patch of road rash all along the bottom, his lips were cracked and white, and his skin had a chalky pallor. And yet I still wanted him.

Somehow the blackness of his eyes only served to highlight his inky black hair, and although his lips were pale and drawn against his skin they somehow still managed to look unbelievably sensual. Even the road rash looked good on him. I realized that he was watching me watch him, his strange black eyes somehow quizzical. To hide my embarrassment I jumped off of the bed and grabbed at the first thing I saw.

“Gum?” I said, holding up a pack of Big Red. He sat up and shook his head.

I popped a stick into my mouth and then looked around some more. “Sun chip?” I said, grabbing a half-eaten bag from the dresser. They were, as I well remembered, Theo's favorite. Again he shook his head. “Well, is there anything you  _ do _ want to eat?” I said, and then instantly regretted it. I knew what he wanted to eat. Me. 

He shook his head violently then, as if he had read my thoughts.

“Really?” I said. “I mean, that's good, but . . .why not?”

He cocked his head to one side, as if he were considering, and then he pointed up, toward his house. He put his hand on the top of his own head, and then held it about a foot lower. It took me a second, and then I got it, but at the same time, didn't. He was trying to tell me he didn't want to eat me because of his annoying-as-hell little sister?

“Isabel?” I asked. Theo nodded. “So, what, you didn't want her to see you eat anyone?” He shook his head. “You didn't want to eat  _ her _ ?” He looked up, as if he were considering the question, and then shook his head again. He tried to speak again, and this time the moan he made was even more creepy, like a raspy barn door. “Let me get you some water,” I said. “Are you sure you don't want any gum? It might help.” I walked over to the sink and filled up a glass; that's when I remembered that Theo  _ hated _ gum. He had told me once, years ago, that if I had ever had to spend three days in a car with someone who snapped their gum incessantly, like his sister Isabel did, then I wouldn't like it either. That was it. 

“You haven't eaten anyone because you saw Isabel eat someone!” He took the water from me and touched his finger to the tip of his nose and then pointed it at me. Right on the nose. I thought about the implications of that. “Does that mean that it's a  _ choice?  _ That all of those people—Isabel, Tommy, Heather—just  _ decided _ they wanted to eat human flesh?”

He looked at me and then shrugged, clearly at a loss. Right. How could he know how it was for anyone else? He only knew his own experiences. He drank some of the water, and then, as if drinking had reminded him that he was thirsty, he drank the rest. “Is that the first water you've had since this all began?” I asked him. He thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Hmm,” I said, “dehydration  _ could _ explain some of it—people have been known to do crazy things when they're dehydrated. Remember that guy last summer? The one from Rhode Island? He had only been lost for two days but when they found him he had already eaten one of his own shoes. Still . . .” I shook my head. “Okay, this is silly. Why am I trying to figure out what caused all this? I don't need to figure out the beginning—just the ending. As in, what are we going to do?” I paced a bit. Theo slid off my bed and onto the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees, quietly watching me.

It was all so familiar that it took my breath away—that was the exact spot and position he had sat in a thousand times before, as he had watched me pace back and forth in my room, trying to figure out one problem or another. His quiet presence had always helped me to gather my thoughts. And it did so again. “Right,” I said, as if he had spoken. “We  _ do _ need to figure this out from the beginning. It's like a math problem: you can't just jump in the middle. So, let's think. What do we know?”

Theo jumped up then, and with what either could have been a grimace or a grin made his way over to my whiteboard in the corner. This, too, was familiar: usually, at some point during my brainstorming sessions Theo would begin to write on the board. He was excellent at taking my long, rambling narratives and condensing them down into their most salient points, making the pattern—and the solution—all that much more obvious. Before I could stop him now he had pulled off the shimmery scarf I usually hung over the board when it was not in use; there was a puff of dust, and then the board was revealed.

Theo stared at it; all the writing on it was in his own hand, because all of the words written on it were from nearly a year ago. There was a list of colleges I had been planning on applying to, starting with my dream college (Oxford), and then moving down through the list to the ultimate safety school, Cortez Community. There were dates for the SATs, and websites offering scholarship help. And there was my flight information for my trip to California, including a list of what I should bring: digital camera, swim suit, and, in bold letters, GRANDPA'S WILL, because even though my mother had been named the executor of his estate he had left the will with me for safe keeping. He had known.

But as difficult as it was to look back on all that, by far the most painful thing written on the board was right in the middle: in bright red, and surrounded by a lop-sided heart, was one word. Prom. It was followed by a question mark, and underneath, in my own handwriting, was written one small word of reply: yes.

Why had I saved this? At first I had told myself that it had been for proof—proof that Theo really had asked  _ me  _ to go to the prom with  _ him.  _ In those first few shattered days after I had come back from California, heart-broken and humiliated, I had been obsessed with proving that I was right. At first all I could think about was how I had stood in the middle of the gym and argued with Theo, insisting that he had asked  _ me  _ to go to the Prom with him, and  _ not _ that girl he was dancing with (April Black—the daughter of one of his dad's partners). And then, after Theo had flat out denied it (and me), all I could think of was  _ proving _ that I was right.  _ Proving _ that I hadn't been delusional, only heartbroken, when I had finally confronted Theo with my pathetic, “But you're my  _ boyfriend _ now,” and he, pity written all over his beautiful face, had steered April away from me without answering.

But after the first week I had realized that, no matter what I said or did, it was too late: everyone was too in love with the “Addie's  _ boyfriend _ ” joke to ever let it drop. After that I had kept the board just to prove to myself that it hadn't all been a dream, that I hadn't invented the whole thing in my head. Theo  _ had _ asked me to the Prom, and he  _ had _ been my boyfriend—if only for one afternoon. Long enough to get what he wanted.

But that was all in the past.

I walked by him now, picked up the eraser, and started to scrub: after nearly a year the writing didn't really want to come off, but I scrubbed hard and eventually cleared a spot in the middle. I ignored the faint traces of heart still visible on the board, picked up a marker and handed it to Theo. He took it hesitantly.

“Okay,” I said, my voice as business-like as I could make it. “Let's get started, then. Tell me, young man: when exactly did you first realize that you were a zombie?”

 


	10. Chapter 10

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Chapter 10: Theo

 

It was typical of Addie to make a joke; the more pain she was in the more insistent she was on making light of the situation. She hadn't been laughing at all, though, when she had written her tiny reply beneath the red heart on her board, even though I'm sure the schmaltzy heart I had drawn must have annoyed the hell out of her. But no: she had surprised me by first smiling, and then by writing her answer below. The ultimate surprise, however, had come when she had then moved to my side and lifted her face, obviously expecting—and wanting—to be kissed. I'm not sure where I got the nerve, but somehow I had lifted her chin with my fingers and softly kissed her lips.

The kisses that had followed hadn't been nearly as soft; it was like a dam had burst, and before I knew it we were both on her bed, my hand up her shirt and her fingers unbuttoning my pants. At the time I had told myself that we were “making love,” but even with my inexperience I knew that two minutes of fumbling and panting barely even qualified as sex, much less love. It had taken longer to put the condom on than it had to complete the whole act. In fact, we had never even gotten fully undressed. Afterwards we had simply had to pull our pants back up—and even then we couldn't look each other in the eyes. Fortunately, however—or perhaps  _ un _ fortunately—before the moment had had a chance to stretch out into truly uncomfortable lengths Addie's father had shouted from right outside her bedroom window that it was time to go, and we had been forced to step outside without saying a word. 

 

 

I had driven them both to the airport in my truck, since George's truck hadn't been running at the time. Addie had ridden behind George, in the jump seat; I had kept trying to catch her eye in the rearview mirror, but she never stopped looking out the side window. Finally, after I nearly drove us off of the road for the third time, she had relented and given me a shy smile. My heart had leapt in my chest, and I found myself vowing that I would be better next time. Next time. Just the thought of that made it necessary for me to shift around in my seat, wishing that it were possible to cross your legs while driving.

George, of course, had remained oblivious to the whole thing, except when I had pulled Addie close and kissed her in the waiting room, and even then he had just chuckled to himself and looked away. I remember thinking that there was no possible way my life could ever get any better.

The was the last time I ever thought that.

 

I looked across the room to where Addie was pacing, her hand running through her hair until it was in a delightful disarray. Once again I was reminded that I had made the worst mistake of my entire life when I had let her go.

“Okay,” she said, “let's begin at the beginning. What happened to you? Do  _ you _ know what caused all this?” I shook my head no, and she continued on. “No, I didn't think so. Okay then, let's look at what we do know—who was affected, and who wasn't. I know about Heather, and Tommy. And you told me about Isabel. Who else?”

I wrote on the board the names she had mentioned, as well as the other people I remembered from the party. Or at least I tried to—my hands were starting to curl even tighter. If Addie noticed, she didn't let on. She stared at the board for a minute.

“That's a lot of people. Were all of those people at your party?” When I nodded yes she said, almost to herself, “Wow, sounds like a swell time at the Frank house. Must have been nice to get an invitation.”

I stared at her in disbelief. I mean, I knew that  _ she _ hated  _ me _ , but how could she think that  _ I _ didn't want  _ her _ ? Hadn't I changed every class I could just so that I could be around her? Hadn't I sat near her at lunch, trying to run interference between her and Chuck and all of the others who teased her? I had even pulled money out of my college fund so that I could pay her dad's tax bill—not that she knew that. Not that I wanted her to know that. Hopefully, she would just think it was a computer glitch and let it go. But to think that after all that she still thought I didn't want her—it was more than I could stand. I tried to say her name, tried to tell her, for once and for all, how sorry I was, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was a groan. She jumped and moved away from me. Great. That was the  _ last _ thing I wanted. I stayed silent, and was rewarded with her eventually moving back over to me and patting me on the arm. “You're right; that's not important now.” I fought the urge to groan again.

“You know,” she said, as she put her finger to her chin and stared at the board, “I think it might be easier if we listed the people who  _ aren't _ affected. Starting with me.” She wiped off the board, and I dutifully wrote her name at the top. “and then Arturo.” I wrote his name, and then Zane's. “Zane?” she said, her brows coming together. “Hmm.  _ Zane _ . . .” She stared at the board again, and then turned to me. “Ugh, I'm an idiot. Of course—the flu shot.” She erased everything on the board again, muttering under her breath, “I  _ knew _ there was something up with that Jonas woman. The question is, was it a mistake, or was it on purpose?” She tapped her fingers against her lips and then turned to me.

“Let me see your arm—the one you got the 'super shot' in.”

I held out my arm. She pushed up the sleeve of my t-shirt and sucked in her breath. “Oh, Theo . . .” she said. I glanced down and saw that where I had gotten the injection my arm was red and swollen—so swollen that the nu-skin the doctor had painted on earlier had broken loose, and where the skin had been cut it had torn open, leaving a jagged wound. As gory as it looked, however, there was no blood—the edges of the cut just gleamed a dull pink. Something glinted inside of it, and I moved my arm to try and get a better look. There—deep inside I could see a piece of what looked like clear plastic sticking up. I tried to grab it between the fingers of my other hand, but they were too clumsy and slipped away. Addie reached up to stop me.

“My god, Theo—doesn't that hurt?”

I shook my head and tried to pull the piece of plastic out of my arm again.

“Wait,” she said. She turned and rummaged through the mess on her dresser, finally coming up with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. I raised my eyebrows at that. “It's not what you think—Dad is still the only stoner in the family. I was trying to fix a brake cable.” She looked down at the pliers again. “I wonder is I should sterilize these first?” I reached up and tried to grab them out of her hand, but she snatched them back. “Okay, okay, just hold on.” She put her free hand up against my arm to hold me steady, then said, “On the count of three. One, two—” I felt a tug on my arm, and Addie sucked in her breath again. “Oh God, Theo, I'm so sorry.”

I looked down and saw that the incision on my arm had ripped another two inches. I didn't care—it wasn't as if I could feel it. Besides, I was more interested in what was clamped between the jaws of the pliers Addie held. It looked like something from the inside of a computer.

“What the hell  _ is _ that?” Addie said as she held the thing closer to her face, and then looked at me in shock. “It's some sort of a microchip. Like the kind they put into dogs at the pound, so that they can identify them. Well, I guess  _ that _ answers  _ that _ question. On purpose, then.” She picked up an empty glass from her nightstand, blew into it to knock out the dust, and then dropped the thing inside it before setting it back down. I reached for it but she stopped me. “Hold on—I know it's not bleeding, but I have to wrap that arm up. Just give me a minute.”

She grabbed a t-shirt from a mound that was threatening to take over one of the corners of her room, looked at it for a moment, shrugged, and then ripped it in half. She wrapped it around my arm several times and then stepped back to check her handiwork.

“Okay, that looks stupid,” she said, and stepped forward again to tuck in the dangling ends. “There.”

She was inches from my shoulder, her chin lifted up to examine my arm. The smell coming off of her skin was intoxicating: I could make out the sharp smell of soap, a light strawberry from her shampoo (Addie used the cheapest shampoo in the world), the salty smell of her sweat, and a richer, muskier scent that I could only label as pure, concentrated, Addie. The beast that was inside me—the one that had turned his hunger to a different kind of flesh—sat up and took notice. Almost against my will I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to Addie's. A growl slipped out of my throat, and I fought the urge to push her back onto the bed.

“What is it Theo? Are you . . . hungry?” I leaned back and shook my head. At least, I wasn't hungry for food. Addie stepped back again, all business, and the spell was broken. “Okay,” she said, “let's get back to figuring this out. We know  _ who _ is affected. And we know who did it to them. Now we just have to figure out why.”

She moved back to the whiteboard, but I didn't follow her. If what she was saying about Dr. Jonas and the shot was true—and it all seemed to make sense—we didn't need to know why; we just had to get out of here, or rather, Addie did. Because if, like she was saying, everyone who had gotten the shot was affected, then the only place safe was out of town. Unless the same thing was happening all over the country, and somehow, I didn't think that was the case. I thought it was too much of a coincidence, all of this happening on the same weekend as the bridge repairs and the slopes closing. Hell, even the property tax hearing could be part of the plan.

The bottom line was that I had to get her out of here. With the bridge close, the only way out of town was over the pass, and the last time I had checked the snow up there was still two feet deep. We'd have to walk. I opened up Addie's closet and started to pull out her winter gear. I dug deep, looking for the serious cold weather stuff. Addie saw what I was doing and tried to stop me.

“Wait Theo. We need to find out what's going on, and that means going back down into town.”

I shook my head “no” and threw a parka at her. Irritated, she threw it back, and as it came toward my face the arm that shot up to bat it away from myself was instinctive, as was the leap and snarl that followed. Addie took two steps back until she was pressed up against her dresser, and I felt such immediate remorse at scaring her that I sank to the floor, my head in my hands. My emotions, it seemed, were all on the surface these days.

“It's okay, Theo. Don't worry. We'll figure it out.” She took a hesitant step forward, and when I didn't move she sank down on the floor next to me and put her head on my shoulder. I reached a clawed hand up to her face and brushed the hair out of her eyes. We had been sitting just like this, nearly a year ago, when I had first realized that I loved her. She had been comforting me then, too, consoling me over the fact that my dad wouldn't pay for me go to a summer art program at the Met in New York. The same program that, eventually, he  _ had _ agreed to pay for—with one condition. A condition that had ended up ruining my whole summer, and, thus far, the rest of my life. I pulled Addie closer, and she turned her face to mine. 

“Theo,” she said. “I've missed you so much.”

I was bending my face toward hers when I heard the sound of feet running through the woods. And from the sound of it they were running directly toward Addie's trailer.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, like comments are good... and stuff.

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Chapter Eleven: Addie

Theo jerked back from me abruptly and leapt to his feet. Outside I could hear my dad calling my name.

“Addie! Addie! Are you in there?”

I don't know whether it was because I had Theo in my room or a zombie, but I leapt to my feet, too, and without a word pushed Theo into the closet. Probably it was a little bit of both, because after last year's disastrous prom my dad had sworn that the next time Theo appeared at our doorstep he had better be wearing a tux and holding flowers. Watching my dad burst through my door now, gun in hand, I knew I had made the right decision—judging from the wild look in his eyes I had a feeling that if he had seen Theo he would have shot first and asked questions later.

“Addie! Thank God you're okay. I've been looking for you all over. You wouldn't believe the crazy shit that's going on in town.”

“Actually, Dad, I would—I saw it. But I came back home, just like you told me.”

He looked at me strangely and said, “I told you to come home if there was ever a zombie attack?”

“Dad. No. You told me that if ever anything bad happened, and we were separated, that I should go to the last place we were together and wait for you—that there was no point in both of us running around and looking for each other.”

“ _ I _ told you that? Wow, that sounds pretty clever. Are you sure that  _ you _ weren't the one who came up with that plan?”

“No, Dad, it was you. I was six, and we were camping in Mexico for the winter because you said the snow up here sucked.”

“Oh yeah—I remember that trip. The one where a bunch of us decided that if we couldn't ski we might as well surf. Man, that was a great trip.”

“Not if you were sober, it wasn't. Don't you remember? You guys got the idea in the middle of an all-night drinking binge and drove down while you were still half-drunk—and fully stoned. I went to sleep in my own bed and woke up in another  _ country _ , with only the clothes on my back because you guys forgot to pack me any.” But my dad wasn't listening—he was lost in the reminiscence.

“Yeah, that was a great trip.” He looked down then and seemed to notice that he still had a loaded—and cocked—gun in his hand. “I wonder how they're handling this down in Mexico?”

“What makes you think this is happening anywhere else? Did you hear something?”

“Nah, we're totally cut off. I was at the Last Chance when everything started to get hairy, and we tried everything we could to contact the outside world. There was no cell phone reception, and the TV and radio were just static. We couldn't even get anything on Marlin's CB. I'm telling you, this is some real end of the world shit.” He went over to my window and peered out the curtain. “How have things been here—have any of them come by?”

I hesitated. He was calmer now, so there was a chance I could explain Theo's presence in my closet without him totally losing it. But what would I say? I didn't even know myself what I was doing—Theo was obviously infected, and struggling with it. What if he lost the struggle, and turned on me, or worse yet, turned on my dad? I edged over so that I was standing between the closet and my dad and said, “No, it's been quiet here. But there was one on the trail.”

He blanched. “Did it bite you?”

“No. I don't think so. I mean, we struggled, and I got pretty banged up, but I don't think it ever bit me. Why?”

He ran his hands through his hair and said, “When Marlin went out to his truck to try and use his CB he got bit by one of them before he could kill it. Twenty minutes later he started complaining about being hot, and feeling like he was having a heart attack. We laid him down in the corner of the bar, and Stacy tried to make him comfortable. She's ski patrol, so she has EMT training. A few minutes later we heard her scream—Marlin had ripped her throat out.”

“Did she change, too?”

“Never had a chance; Jim put a bullet in her brain.”

“What? Why?”

He shook his head and went to look out my door. I heard something falling in my closet, and moved to knock a pile of books over with my foot to cover the sound. He spun to look a me, startled. “Sorry,” I said. “But you didn't answer me. Why did Jim shoot Stacy in the head?”

“Because you have to destroy the brain. Everybody knows that. But don't let it bother you; she had already bled out by then. So even if she wasn't a zombie she was still dead.”

“Meaning that my godfather—the man who gave me my first skis—didn't shoot an innocent woman in the head. He just shot her corpse. That's supposed to make me feel better?”

“Addie, it's what you have to do.”

“We don't  _ know _ that. You're acting like this is a movie. Tell me, if there were giant wolves out there would you be making silver bullets? Or if they were vampires, would you be draping yourself in garlic? Or mummies? What would you do if you were being attacked by mummies?”  
He walked over to the window by my bed and peered through the curtain, talking to me over his shoulder. “I'd walk briskly away. What the hell is a mummy supposed to be able to do to you anyway? Moan at you?”

As if on cue there was a moan from my closet. I gave a moan myself to cover it and said, “Yeah, right. Moan at you. Good one, Dad.”

He must not have heard anything though, because he kept talking. “These aren't mummies, Addie. They're zombies. And with zombies, you have to destroy the brain.”

Suddenly it all clicked for me, and I started talking, not so much to convince him but to run my theory by myself. “Are they zombies? I mean, that's what we're all thinking, but really, what do we know for sure? All we know now is that there is some kind of an infection; let's take Hollywood out of it and stick to the known facts. Okay,” I looked around for my marker but Theo must have taken it into the closet with him. I grabbed another one and started to write. “Fever, fast heart rate, hunger for flesh, incapable of speech, rage—” My dad interrupted me.

“How do you know they're incapable of speech?”

Oops. I said, as casually as possible, “Well,  _ I _ haven't heard any of them try to speak—have you?”

“What are they going to say: 'Hold still while I eat your brains'?”

“Have you actually  _ seen _ any of them eating brains?” I challenged.

“Well, no, but—”

I turned to him, more certain than ever that my theory was right. “See? That's what I mean. You assume they eat brains, because you assume they are zombies. Undead. Mythological creatures. But by making that assumption you're giving up your chance to really understand what's going on. And the only way we're going to be able to fix this is by understanding it.”

“The only way we're going to fix things now is by putting a bullet in the brain of every single one of those things.” He paced to the door again. “I just don't feel safe here—they could come at us from any side. Are you sure no zombies have been by?”

Now that I had my theory I could honestly give him my answer. “Yes. Not one single zombie has come by.”

He seemed to consider what I said for a moment and then come to a decision. “Okay. Here's what we're going to do.  _ I'm  _ going to go back into town to get some supplies, come back and get you, and then we're going to go over to the school and meet up with the others.”

“The school? Why the school?”

“Because the basement is a bomb shelter—there's blankets and emergency supplies down there, and it's defensible. It was Ben Welsey's idea.”

“Mr. Welsey? When did you see him?”

“When I was pulling some girl off of his back. I tell you what, this thing had led to some strange pairings; I never thought I'd see a ski bum and a bank president share anything, let alone bullets.” I started to speak and he held up his hand. “I know what you're going to say, Addie, and the answer is 'no.' You need to stay here until I come back for you, and then we'll circle around the long way to get to the school. I don't want you anywhere near the town—it's just too dangerous. Sit here, keep quiet, and remember: if you see  _ any _ of them, even someone you know”—he handed me the gun—“one in the brain. You can't fix this. Trust me.”

I didn't argue, even though I had no intention of following his instructions—any of them. I just took the gun and nodded. He hugged me briefly, kissed me on the forehead, then said, “That's my girl.” And then he slipped out into the night.

I looked at the gun in my hand. From the closet, I could hear a low moan.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

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Chapter Twelve: Theo

 

When the closet door was thrown open,I didn't know what to expect—I couldn't have really blamed Addie if she had followed her dad's advice and put “one in my brain.” But then again, with Addie, you learned to expect the unexpected—and that was what I got.

“Jesus, Theo, do you think you could've possibly made some  _ more _ noise? I thought I was going to have to start singing and tap-dancing to cover it up.”

As I moved out of the closet Addie put the gun on the dresser and turned her back on me to rifle through the clothes I had pulled out earlier. She picked out a light fleece jacket. “Are you ready? Do you need a jacket or something?”

I shook my head, confused. A jacket for what?

She put the fleece on and slipped the gun into the pocket before moving to the door. I stepped forward—it was more like a leap, actually, because as soon as I thought it my legs took over—and got between Addie and the door. Although I had clearly startled her I noticed that her hand had moved not to the gun in her pocket, but to her mouth, as if she was about to say, “Oh, my!” Stupid.

“Theo, you heard what I said to my dad, right? We need to figure this out if we ever hope to fix it. And for that, there's only one place to go—the source. We need to find P. Jonas.”

And stubborn. Addie didn't  _ need  _ to fix anything—she needed to stay here, where it was safe, and wait for her dad to get back. George might not be any good at paying his taxes, or running a business, but if there was one thing he could do it was fight, and I knew that when it came to protecting Addie he would be fighting ten times as hard as he normally did. 

The trouble with Addie, though, was that she could never leave a mystery unsolved. That very trait was what had led us to each other in the first place, back when we were twelve. I had woken up one morning to find a girl peering into my bedroom window, her dark hair, pointed chin and slanted eyebrows making me think, in my half-waking state, that I had just been woken up by an elf.

“Hello,” she had said. “You must be the new boy. I'm the old girl. I was wondering what you looked like.”

“And what do I look like?” I had replied, surprising myself. I wasn't usually so bold.

She had cocked her head to one side, examining me openly, and said, “You look like someone who needs an adventure. Of course, you also look like someone who wants to go back to sleep. I wonder: which will win?”

The adventuresome side had won. Addie had taken me down to the town park, where there was an enormous music festival going on, with thousands of people from all over the world camped out in tents so tightly packed together that from a distance it had looked like a colorful nylon patchwork quilt. Up close, however, it looked like a mess of beer cans, smoldering campfires, and lost shoes. “Come on,” Addie had said, not bothering to keep her voice down as we passed between the tents, and sometimes, when they  _ very _ close together, over them, “this way.”

She had led me to the chain link fence that separated the camping area from where the musical performances took place; looking over her shoulder once she had pulled back a corner of the fence, exposing a triangle shaped opening. “After you,” she had said, and then, when I had crawled through, had slipped in after me. Once inside she had gone straight for a large yellow-striped circus tent, pacing back and forth along the ground all around it. “A-ha!” she had finally shouted, and bent down to pick up her prize—a dollar bill.

“Come on, there's always money dropped in front of the beer tent.”

I had had nearly eighty bucks in my pocket at the time—the change left over from the hundred my dad had given me the day before, when I had mentioned I wanted to go to the bookstore and look for a new book. I considered mentioning it to her—even, now that I looked at the run down state of the once top-quality clothing Addie wore, giving it to her—but at that moment I had spotted a crumpled up piece of green on the ground in front of me. It had been a five. Addie had noticed me picking it up, and when she saw the denomination her face had lit up.

“Sweet!” she had crowed, before going back to looking. Somehow I had known that she wouldn't have looked nearly as pleased to see me simply pull the money out of my pocket.

A few minutes later I had found a crumpled joint—I recognized it from the video in my health ed class, which was supposed to warn us of the dangers of drugs but was actually more like a “how-to” guide. Addie not not been nearly as happy about that find.

“I'll take that,” she had said, snatching it out of my fingers before I had really had a chance to even look at it. Twenty minutes—and seven dollars—later we were done. I turned to head back towards the fence, but Addie had stopped me. “Nah, we're good now,” she had said, boldly walking up to the front gate. She had pushed it open, waking up a burly man with a full beard who had been leaning against it. When he saw who had woken him his face got stern.

“Hey!” he had barked, his voice so menacing I froze in my tracks. “You know you're not supposed to be in there.”

Addie had held the joint up between her thumb and forefinger, smiled sweetly and said, “Please accept our apologies.” The man had turned his glower down a notch or two, held out his hand, and said, “Don't let me catch you here again.”

As Addie dropped the joint into his palm she had said, “Don't worry—you won't.” Judging from the way he narrowed his eyes at her I was sure that I wasn't the only one who had caught her double meaning, but she had turned and was walking away before he had a chance to say anything else. We hadn't taken two steps before I heard the click of a lighter and a deep inhale. “Hope it's ditch weed,” she had muttered under her breath, before turning to me with a smile and saying, “Come on—this is the best part.”

She had led me into town, up to a bakery I had seen the day before. There were already people waiting on the front porch, even though the sign on the door was still turned to “Shut.” Addie skipped around to the back, where she darted through a side door that was standing open, steam pouring out in the early morning light. “Come on,” she had said again when I had hesitated. I followed her inside and was immediately struck by all the wonderful smells—it smelled like Christmas, only multiplied by about a thousand. Addie had carefully maneuvered us around a mixer the size of a washing machine and past a long wooden table that was dusted with flour. She put up an arm to stop me as a large woman wrapped in a white apron pulled a three foot long tray out of an oven in front of us and slid it onto a wheeled rack. The tray was filled with fresh croissants, and as I leaned in closer to inhale their buttery smell I had inadvertently pressed up against Addie's restraining arm. The feel of her arm on my chest was completely disconcerting—in my house, no one  _ ever  _ touched—but it was also surprisingly nice.

“Easy there, boy,”she had said, holding me back, but I could tell that she was eagerly inhaling their scent as well.

The woman reached up to pull another tray out the oven, and Addie grabbed my arm and pulled. “Now,” she said. We had darted around the woman, coming out of the kitchen and into the serving area just as a girl unlocked the front door. Addie had slid up to the counter in front of the crowd that was pushing through the door, and was leaning there with her chin in her hands when the girl came back.

“Hey Addie—the usual?”

Addie had reached into her pocket and laid the handful of bills down on the counter. “ _ Two _ , please.” She looked at the bills one more time, screwed up her face as if she was doing math in her head, and then added, “But just one mocha. Please.” She spoke to me out of the side of her mouth then, almost in a stage whisper. “ _ We can share. _ ”

“Coming right up.” The girl looked at me. “Who's your friend?”

Addie had said, “This is Theo,” beaming with so much pride that it was like she had just invented me that morning. Which, thinking back on it six years later, she had. After all, that had been the moment when I first started loving her.

And I wasn't going to lose her now. I moved closer to the door of Addie's trailer and shook my head again. Addie sighed. “Theo.” She sounded like she always did when was trying to convince me to do something against my will—which, up until last May, had been just about every day. God, how I missed her pushing me around. She put her hand on my arm now, and I was so overwhelmed with desire that I was forced to take a step back, slamming into the door behind me with a bang that startled us both. She put her hand back at her side. “Sorry,” she said. She took a deep breath and began again.

“I know that you—and my dad—are trying to keep me safe. And I appreciate it. But I don't think that hiding in the school is the answer. This wasn't an accident—this was planned, right down to the ending. And I can't hide out while somebody else plans my ending. I just can't. So please—you don't have to come with me. In fact, I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to—judging from my dad, I'd say that most people are going to be 'shoot first, ask questions never,' but  _ please _ Theo; I have to go.”

She thought that I didn't want to let her go because I was scared—for  _ me? _ How far had I fallen in Addie's opinions, anyway? I thought about what she had just said; as usual, Addie was probably right. Her dad—and most people—probably thought that if they could just hide out long enough eventually the cavalry would come and rescue everyone. But what if there  _ was _ no cavalry? Worse yet, what if the cavalry—in the form of P. Jonas and her minions—was already here? I looked at Addie and nodded my head; she smiled and said, “I knew you'd come around. Just let me write a note to my dad.”

She erased the whiteboard yet again; this time, the last traces of the heart I had drawn on it a year ago nearly disappeared. “Dad: I'll meet you at the school. Don't worry. I love you, Addie,” she wrote on the board. She looked at it closely; I almost thought that she was checking for errors. It wouldn't have surprised me—Addie would probably run spell check on a suicide note. But what she did next  _ did _ surprise me: she picked up the red marker and re-drew the heart, exactly where it had been before. She put the marker down and ducked her head, avoiding my eyes as she pushed past me to the door. 

I reached out to stop her again, careful to put my hand on her shoulder gently before I put my finger to my lips. I opened the door slowly and looked out into the dark, listening intently.

Nothing.

Motioning for her to follow me, I stepped out into the night. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of my love—my life—following me.

 


	13. Chapter 13

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Chapter Thirteen: Addie

I expected Theo to lead me toward the road—after all, it was so dark that I could hardly see my hand in front of my face, and at least on the road we would have starlight to see by. But he moved off in the other direction, toward the trail. I put my hand on his arm to stop him and stood up on my toes to whisper in his ear. “I think Tommy Parker might still be down there,” I said, my lips brushing his ear as I spoke. He shivered and jerked his head away. I tried not to let it hurt my feelings, and failed. Obviously how he felt about me hadn't changed one bit.

He cocked his head to one side, listening, and then shook his head before heading off again in the same direction. I followed behind—who was I to question his new-found super powers?

We passed behind my dad's trailer and his shop, and I stopped to grab a couple of scrap pieces of titanium tubing, the base material for my dad's bike frames, from out of a bucket near the door. Lightweight and practically indestructible, I thought they might come in handy. I turned back toward the trail and ran full tilt into Theo; I hadn't even heard him come up behind me. “Here,” I said, handing him one of the pieces. “Just in case.”

He took it from me and then reached down and took my hand. “Ummm,” he said. Come.

“Hey, I understood that,” I said. “You can talk. Maybe it's wearing off.”

He just shook his head, and pulled me after him, nearly jerking my arm out of its socket in the process. “Sss . . .” he hissed, the word clearly an effort for him to form. He didn't, however, release my hand.

“That's okay,” I said, and it was; anything was worth feeling his hand in mine again. Pathetic.

Armed with our titanium clubs we headed toward the trail. By keeping my hand in his Theo was able to lead me around obstacles like low-hanging branches and unseen rocks until we got to the top of the drainage. Then Theo pushed me behind him and carefully began to make his way down, his eyes sweeping the dark forest all around us, his head turned to listen. I even thought I saw him stop once and sniff the air before he continued on.

Finally we got to the spot on the trail where I had been attacked; I tapped Theo on the back and he turned to me questioningly. I pointed to the trail, and then, unsure how to convey “This is where I was attacked by a zombie” in sign language, made a face and curled my fingers into claws. Theo seemed to understand, though, because he instantly became even more alert. He also carefully sniffed the air—this time I was certain of it—before he moved over to the edge of the trail, motioning me to stay back.

Dropping into a crouch he carefully approached the edge of the drainage where Tommy and I had rolled off; when he got there he slowly craned his neck forward, peering at the bottom He stared intently for a moment before he pulled back, looked at me, and, clearly more relaxed, shook his head “no.”

This was the part of the movie where the creature, having successfully eluded the hero, now jumps out and attacks, and I found myself holding my breath, waiting for that to happen. A minute went by, and then another, and still nothing happened. Theo was watching me curiously, his eyes like two black holes in the night, and it dawned on me, clearer than ever, that this was no movie. This was real.

Theo's curious look turned to concern then. I put up my hands and waved them in front of my chest, trying to convey, “I'll be okay—just give me a minute.” The next thing I knew Theo was at my side, and I couldn't help myself: I threw my arms around him and leaned my face into his chest.

He stood frozen for a minute, and then I felt his arms wrap around me tightly, pulling me closer. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my cheek, fast and strong and  _ alive.  _ Whatever Theo was, he wasn't a zombie. I couldn't vouch for the others—the image of Tommy Parker trying to pull me into his jaws came unbidden to my mind—but Theo was  _ not _ the same as the others. I listened to his heart beat for a moment longer. It was impossibly fast _ ; _ how long could it maintain that pace before it gave out? We needed to get some answers.

I let go of Theo and tried to step back, but his only response was to hold me tighter and growl low under his breath. I pushed against him a little, and his grip tightened even more: now I was having trouble breathing. “Theo, you're hurting me,” I squeaked out.

The result was instantaneous: he released me so quickly I toppled back, and would have fallen into the drainage behind us if he hadn't reached out with lightning quick hands and pulled me back to him. He then set me away from him again so fast that I felt like I had whiplash.

He turned and began to make his way down the drainage. I tried to follow along behind him, but without Theo's hand to guide me I kept slipping. Regardless, he didn't offer it to me again. Finally we reached the bottom, where the trail opened up, and the extra starlight helped me to see well enough to stop stumbling. It also made me feel incredibly exposed.

Theo must have felt the same way because he moved back to be closer to me, his eyes darting back and forth across the open trail. It was even worse when we got to the road. We both moved quickly then, eager to get under cover, and when we got to the first house we moved into the shadows of its walls in relief. As we slunk past the first few houses without hearing or seeing anyone I started to breathe easier. Maybe the rest of the zombies had left.

I was thinking about where they would go—would they, like Tommy, retain their memories enough to know how to get out of town?—as we were creeping underneath the bay window of a Victorian miner's shack turned posh B & B. Suddenly Theo stopped in front of me, listening. A curtain above us was hanging out of the window, caught on a piece of broken glass that still remained stuck to the edge of the frame.

I listened too, and then I heard it: from inside the house there was a low moaning, together with a wet, tearing sound. Theo motioned for me to move away from the house, and I nodded my head to show that I understood, stepping away at the same time. And then everything seemed to happen at once.

As my foot came down on a piece of broken glass, shattering it, the window above me exploded outward. I instinctively covered my face and closed my eyes to protect them from the flying debris: when I opened them up again one of the construction workers I had seen earlier was on the ground between Theo and me, his entire face slick with blood. He looked over his shoulder at Theo, and then, with a quick, reptilian jerk of his head, at me. He moved so fast then I didn't have any time to react; he had me on the ground before I could even put my hands up.

Snake-like, his head flashed forward toward my neck; I was barely able to throw my head to the side enough so that his teeth came down on my shoulder instead. Although the pain was excruciating, even worse was the knowledge that this was only the beginning of the pain—this thing intended to  _ eat _ me.

They say that a fear of being eaten alive is our most primal fear—it is what makes sharks, and bears, and even gigantic radioactive rats so terrifying to our collective psyche. And at that moment I had to agree: I  _ was _ terrified. I was also pissed off. How  _ dare _ he try and eat me?

Suddenly I remembered the bar in my hand; I had a feeling that beating on him with it wasn't going to do much good, so instead I took it in both hands and put one end under his chin. I pushed, using it like a pry bar to get his mouth off of me. Our eyes locked then, and as I stared into the black emptiness I knew that this creature wasn't like Theo, or even like Tommy; this creature didn't have any higher brain functioning at at all—it only wanted to feed. On me.

It opened its mouth so wide it looked like it was going to try and swallow me whole, and the bar lodged even more firmly under its jawbone. Just then it began to make a high, keening sound, like some kind of a weird song. It was only able to get a few notes out, however, before Theo was on its back.

His weight on the creature drove it forward, into me, and into the bar. I felt a moment of resistance, and then the bar was sliding easily into the creature's neck. This time, when the creature opened its mouth to scream/sing again, nothing came out—the bar must have destroyed its voice box.

With a growl Theo wrapped his arms around the creature's torso and rolled off to the side—it was a tremendous relief to have both of their weights off me, and I took in a few grateful gulps of air before I rolled to my side myself to try and help, but by the time I got to my knees Theo and the creature were already up, Theo swinging his clawed fists at the creature's face like clubs. Although they were connecting on almost every swing the creature neither put up its own hands in defense or moved to attack Theo in return. Instead it just kept stepping backwards, the titanium bar jutting out from beneath its chin grotesquely.

Since I was already on the ground it was easy for me to maneuver myself so that I was behind the stumbling creature; like something out of a Three Stooges routine the creature fell over me and hit the ground. There was a popping sound, and then a gurgle. I jumped to my feet, ready to run, but when I looked back over my shoulder at the creature I saw that there was no need: spinning as it fell, the creature had hit the ground face first, and the force of the fall had not only driven the bar all the way through the back of its neck, but also several inches into the ground beneath it.

It struggled to free itself as blood, black in the starlight, spread slowly beneath it. There was a movement behind me, and I jumped back as Theo came charging up behind me to land, with a sickening crunch, on the creature's neck, driving the bar even deeper into the ground. Its legs started to move convulsively then, like it was trying to run, and the Three Stooges image was reinforced as it began to spin in circles, still pinned to the ground. All that was missing was the “nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.”

I watched in horror as the blood continued to soak into the ground as the creature spun, slower and slower, until finally both the blood and the spinning stopped. I looked at Theo: he stared back at me, his face impassive in the dark.

Okay. I still didn't know what was affecting Theo, but there was no doubt in my mind at all about the creature in front of me:  _ that _ was a zombie. As the realization hit I felt my legs fall out from underneath me, but Theo caught me before I could hit the ground. When my shoulder hit his arm I cried out in pain; looking down, I saw that my jacket was soaked with blood. I reached up to touch the wound with my free hand but Theo hissed a warning low in my ear and I stopped. He turned his head to look over his shoulder, and I saw his eyes narrow. Then he was picking me up and moving backwards, slowly and quietly carrying me into the nearest alley.

When we were a little ways away from the house Theo stopped moving and pressed his back up against the wall, deeper into the shadows. I looked up at his face, trying to get a sense of how bad things were, but he was so intent on watching the space we had just left that he wouldn't look down at me. Finally, though, I saw what he saw: a group come slinking out of the shadows. When they saw the construction worker pinned to the ground they let out a series of growls and snarls, and descended on his body. I cringed, expecting to see them tear into it with their teeth, but when they got close to him they only sniffed his body once or twice and then turned away, sniffing the air around him.

One of them seemed to pick up my scent, because with a hiss his head swiveled in our direction: it was Shitzi. He sniffed the air experimentally a few more times, and then took a step toward us. I felt a trickle of blood run down my shoulder to my bicep, and Shitzi took a few more quick steps. Then Theo clamped one hand down hard over the wound, doubling, tripling the pain. I clamped my teeth shut, desperately trying to hold back the agonized scream that threatened to escape my lips. He squeezed tighter, and I lost the battle—just then, however, his other hand came down over my mouth, silencing me. I couldn't breathe, and instinctively I fought against him, my struggles causing the pain in my shoulder to multiply as Theo's grip on me tightened. My vision swum, and there was a sound in the back of my head like the roar of the ocean. And then it all went dark.

 


	14. Chapter 14

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Chapter Fourteen: Theo

 

I felt Addie go limp in my arms, and knew that she had passed out—either from the pain of the pressure I had put on her wound, or from lack of oxygen. I felt bad, but it had to be done—I had to stop it from bleeding anymore. The smell of it was already overwhelming; even though I hadn't hungered after flesh since the moment the spell had been broken by watching Isabel snack on Jake's intestines, my senses still recognized it. Just as they recognized that Shitzi would follow the scent until he found the source.

He took another step forward and I tensed, ready to fight. I wondered if Shitzi would remain as confused as the construction worker had been about whose side I was on. Somehow, I doubted it. Just then one of the other ghouls whipped their head around to stare into the broken window of the house; with a low growl they jumped up and inside. The others, except for Shitzi, followed quickly behind, and I could hear rending and tearing sounds coming from inside the house. Shitzi hesitated a moment longer, looking hard in our direction. I stood stock still, and fervently hoped that Addie would remain passed out. Finally, with a grunt, Shitzi turned toward the house, and with one leap was through the window and gone. I fought the urge to sigh.

I looked down at Addie: she was so pale. I slowly released the pressure on her wound—my hand came away dark and sticky. I had to get her somewhere where I could fix it. I remembered then that the kitchen at Enrico's had a first aid kit—I had seen it earlier, on the wall.

I started to move off in that direction, carefully passing from one shadow to another down alleyways. When we came to the back door I saw and smelled the blood trail where somebody had been dragged out of the building, but the blood was hours old. I cautiously pulled the door open with one hand, all of my senses alert for what might be inside, but as I neither heard nor saw anything I stepped inside, intending to carry Addie down the hallway toward the kitchen. When I passed an open door on my right, however, I had to stop, startled by the sight of a body inside. Startled, because I hadn't smelled a thing.

I ducked inside, curious. There was a girl on the desk with two neat holes in her forehead. The second of the two was smaller, and was surrounded by powder marks, as if whoever had shot her had done so at extremely close range. Despite the obviously mortal nature of her wounds there was very little blood. I gave an experimental sniff; the only blood I could really smell came from the dried blood that was on her chin and lips (she had obviously been interrupted mid-meal), and a small puddle that was on the desk beside her.

I remembered then that Addie had mentioned Heather and Rick. This must be Heather, but where was Rick? Addie stirred in my arms, and I stepped back out of the office, continuing on down toward the kitchen where I laid her on a stainless steel table. The cold of the table, after the unnatural warmth of my arms, must have woken her up: her eyes flew open and stared into mine, although she made no sound.

After what seemed like a full minute her eyes left mine and stared past me. “Good,” she whispered, clearly recognizing where we were. “Help me sit up, please.”

I helped her into a sitting position. She unzipped her jacket with her good arm and moved her uninjured shoulder to shrug it out; reaching up, she then slowly and carefully slid the jacket off of her other arm. With the dark jacket gone I could finally see how much she was bleeding—her shirt was soaked through.

“Ugh,” she said, trying to push the neck of her shirt aside so that she could see the wound. It was stuck. She glanced around the kitchen quickly, and then said, “Could you get those for me?” nodding at a pair of heavy duty kitchen shears hanging on a nearby wall magnet. Addie took them with her good hand—which was fortunately her right—and cut her shirt from collar to sleeve, exposing the wound.

We both stared at it in horror. There was a divot missing out of her shoulder the size of a walnut, which, in itself, was disturbing enough. Knowing that it had been made by teeth— _ human _ teeth—made it even worse. Addie looked away from it and swallowed. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Okay, here's what I need: gauze, tape, and antibiotic cream.  _ Lots _ of antibiotic cream. The first aid kit is over there, behind the fire extinguisher. Oh, and some Tylenol would be good—my head is killing me.”

I looked at her sharply. She examined my face, and then went even paler. “That was how it started for you, wasn't it? A headache.”

I went to the first aid kit and lifted the whole thing off of the wall to bring to her, not meeting her eyes. Addie opened up the box and pulled out a few packets of painkiller and some some triple strength antibiotic cream. She took off the cap with her teeth and squeezed what looked like the whole tube onto the wound, then tossed down the empty tube and reached for a roll of gauze. She looked at her shoulder and then pulled off the rest of her shirt in frustration. “This is no place for modesty—I'm sure the sight of my bloody bra won't drive anyone to distraction.”

I had to disagree with her there. While her bra was not at all revealing, and the blood held no appeal, seeing her like that brought back painfully poignant memories of sliding my hand beneath Addie's shirt as we lay on her bed and softly cupping her breast with my hand. Worse yet, it brought back memories of the way she had shivered in my arms, and then, sighing my name into my mouth, had trailed her fingers down my stomach until they rested on the fly of my jeans. I remembered that I had stopped breathing entirely as she had pulled the first button free.

Addie held out the gauze to me, and I returned to the present as she spoke. “I think maybe I should forget the tape and just wrap the whole damn thing. I'll hold one end if you'll wind the rest around my shoulder.”

I took the gauze she was offering from her, grateful to have something to do besides chase my thoughts down the path that they had been following. She pressed one end of the roll softly against the bite, held up her arm, and wincing, said, “Okay, go.” I started winding the gauze around her shoulder. “Pull it tight,” she said. I pulled it tighter. She turned even paler and looked away.

“So,” she said, obviously trying for a conversational tone, and failing, “Am I right? Did it start with a headache?”

I nodded once, without looking at her. She was silent for a moment, and then said, in a small voice, “How are you doing it, Theo? How are you not like . . .  _ them? _ ” I looked over at her then, and saw that she was biting her lip, waiting for my answer. What could I tell her? I didn't even really know the answer myself; all I knew for sure was that one minute I was flooded with the urge to kill, and destroy, and  _ consume _ , and then I snapped out of it. Or at least I snapped out of wanting to eat people. All because, on some deep level, my brain knew that anything Isabel wanted, I didn't. It was ridiculous. It made no sense, even in words. In sign language, which was what I was reduced to now, it made even less.

I finished with the gauze, looked back at her, and shrugged. She took the end of it from me and put it between her teeth, tearing the strip down the middle while keeping hold of one half. I saw what she intended, and grabbing that half from her, wound it around her shoulder again before I tucked it under the piece she was still holding in her teeth, forming a loose knot. Together we pulled the knot tight.

I must have pulled too hard, though, because suddenly what little color she had regained drained from her face, and she swayed on the table, slumping over toward me. I reached up and put my hand on her other shoulder to steady her, and she looked at that hand on her bare shoulder for a moment before she said, almost under her breath, “Of course, you probably just  _ decided _ not to eat people. You were always so good about knowing exactly what you wanted. And what you didn't.”

She said the last part so softly that if my hearing hadn't been amped up I would have missed it. As it was, though, what she said was unmistakable—and unbelievable. I couldn't believe that she really thought I didn't want her anymore. Finally I began to understand her actions over the last year: it wasn't just her anger that had kept her away from me—it was her pain. Pain that I had caused her with my selfishness. And now, when I finally understood, when I finally got it, there was nothing I could say. But maybe, I thought, there was something I could do.

The plan was to just kiss her softly, once, to show her that I still cared. That I still wanted her. I would softly slide my hand up her shoulder to her ear, and then, when she looked at me, bend and softly kiss her on the forehead. That was all. Just one kiss. Once the decision was made, however, it was like my body took over from my brain, and I was almost startled when I saw my hand moving up to the back of her head to pull her to me, my lips coming down on hers with a force that knocked our teeth together. When she opened her mouth in surprise I thrust my tongue inside, sliding it across her own as my other hand grabbed at her breast through her bra, my thumb moving back and forth roughly over her nipple. I pushed her backwards onto the table then, and the next thing I knew I was on top of her, both hands holding her face as I kissed her brutally, my hips moving rhythmically against hers. I felt her hand move to my lower back and slip up and under my shirt, deliciously cold against my fevered skin. With one hand I reached down to her jaw, pulling her mouth open so that I could kiss her even more deeply.

Beneath me she whimpered slightly; the sound broke the spell and I wrenched my lips away from hers, ashamed. I was starting to slide off the table—off of her—when she shocked me by taking her hand away from my back to put it on the back of my head, bringing my lips down to hers once again. And then I was lost. I slid one hand down her stomach to the waistband of her jeans, and as my useless fingers fumbled against the button I felt her hold her breath, and I did the same. And in the absence of our heavy panting, I finally heard what I should have heard much, much, earlier—the sound of someone coming through the front door.

 


	15. Chapter 15

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Chapter Fifteen: Addie

 

Theo moved away from me so quickly that I didn't even have time to protest; the feel of the cold air on my skin after the warmth of his body was like having a bucket of cold water poured on me from above. My teeth slammed shut and instantly began to chatter. Theo pulled me off the table and around the corner to where we kept the dirty laundry. His slid his hand over my mouth, but there was no need: I could hear the sound of footsteps crunching across broken glass as well as he could.

He must have felt my trembling because he pulled me closer and wrapped his other arm around my waist; the extra warmth was enough to stop my teeth from chattering so he moved his hand down from off my mouth, slowly trailing it over my chin and neck. Somehow that gentle touch was even more intimate that the rolling and groping of before, and, lost in the moment, I lifted my head so that my lips could brush against his jaw. I felt him go still.

I heard the footsteps coming closer, and then, surprisingly enough, I heard voices.  _ Human  _ voices. And not only were they  _ not _ moaning and groaning, they also didn't sound the least bit panicky. In fact they were speaking casually, almost as if they didn't realize they were in the middle of a zombie invasion. And then they stepped into the kitchen and I saw that they both wore the khaki uniforms of of Shelley Security. That's why they weren't worried—they were Jonas' men. Although when I looked closer I noticed that they both carried automatic rifles on straps slung over their shoulders—so maybe they were a  _ little  _ worried. Curiously, their belts each held an assortment of plastic zip ties, all different colors. I saw that the first man to enter the room—the louder and older of the two—kept stroking his over and over again, as if to check that they were still there. In that same hand he held a hand-rolled cigarette, and the smell of the tobacco in the kitchen was sharp and pungent. As he lifted it to his lips I realized that he was the same man Jonas had called to her in the cafeteria earlier—Webb, I thought. In the cafeteria, however, he had seemed almost comical, hulking and ill at ease. Here he seemed comfortable—so comfortable, in fact, that after he finished his smoke he flipped it up into the air and watched as it spun and then fell to the table, next to my bloody shirt.

“Nice field strip.” The younger of the two, a dark-skinned Hispanic man in his early twenties, spoke to him derisively.

“We're in a fucking kitchen. That is field stripping for a kitchen.” He stepped forward and picked up my shirt, looking at the open first aid kit next to it. “Looks like we might have another second gen,” he said, dropping my shirt back to the table and reaching into his pocket for a package of Drum tobacco. He reached into the pouch and pulled out a pinch of tobacco, which he then dropped into a rolling paper and rolled into a neat cigarette with one hand before putting the smoke in his mouth and sliding the tobacco back into his pocket. Finally he pulled a silver lighter out of one pocket, and with a practiced flick of his wrist lit the cigarette in his mouth. The whole maneuver was done in about thirty seconds, and without once taking his hand off of his gun.

The younger man watched the whole procedure nervously, and then spoke. “Shit. How long is this mission supposed to last, anyway?”

Webb looked at him out of the corner of his eye as smoke curled around his face. “As long as the doc wants it to.  _ You _ want to tell her it's taking too long?” He took another drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the younger man's face. The soldier coughed and looked away. 

“This is ridiculous. How are we supposed to keep tabs on an entire fucking  _ town? _ It's too much.” He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, nervously checking the room. 

“Relax. We already got most of the first gens in the primary sweep—that just leaves the second gens. And even the civs can take care of the secs—we've already found twenty or so taken out.”

“Then why don't we just pull back and let the civvies take care of them?”

“Because doc wants them alive—for now.”

“If she wants them alive then what are we doing back here again, picking up another dead zed? Why didn't we just get it when we got the sec gen the  _ first  _ time we were here?”

Webb sighed and flicked his cigarette away again. “Man, I'm telling you,  _ relax _ . The doc wants it done the way she wants it done—what do you care? Six months ago you were stuck in the 'Stan, picking sand out of your ass and barely making enough to cover child support. Now you're back in the States  _ and _ making enough to get married and divorced three or four more times, easy.”

“Like you?”

Webb stared hard at him until finally the younger man dropped his eyes in submission.

“Sorry. I didn't mean—”

Webb didn't let him finish, but when he spoke his voice was a little less rough. “Yeah, like me. Anyway, I don't need to worry about that anymore—McCall taught me a neat new trick. Seems that since your average zed starts out at about one-oh-six they stay nice and warm for a good long time after they're capped. Long enough to have some fun, anyway.”

The younger soldier looked confused, and then understanding lit his eyes and he looked sickened. “You don't mean you—with the bodies? Man, that's sick.”

“What? A man has needs. And besides: we've all had out shots.”

“That's not the point. These are people.  _ Dead  _ people. And this group—man, they're just kids.”

Moving with lightning fast speed Webb grabbed him by the collar and shoved him up against the double doors of the refrigerator, causing something inside of it to rattle and crash. That was good, because his quick movement had startled me so much that I had jumped back into Theo and knocked over one of the dirty laundry baskets behind us with a small thump. Luckily the two men seemed to be too busy struggling to notice—the younger one trying to shake off the older one, and the older one hissing in the younger one's ear.

“The sooner you get over thinking of these things as humans the better off you'll be. What's more, you'll have a much better chance of staying alive. Case in point.”

In one fluid movement he released the younger man and spun around, his rifle raised and pointed at the room Theo and I were hiding in. Before I could even react he fired a shot, the noise and the smell of the gunpowder almost distracting me from the fact that there was now a bullet ricocheting around our hiding spot. Finally it pinged off the steel leg of a utility sink and landed with a smack in the pile of over-turned laundry. Theo quickly pushed me back behind him, blocking my view of the two men. I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and tried to ward off the chills that suddenly ran down my spine as I tried to listen to what the men were saying over the pounding of my heart.

“What are you doing?” the younger one yelled.

“Saving your ass. There's something over there. I heard it move.”

“Wait. If it was a zed it would have come after us already. It might be a survivor. Hello?” he called out. “Is there anybody there? We won't hurt you.”

Webb laughed. “No, we won't hurt you—we'll just kill you a little.”

“What are you saying?”

I heard the sounds of a struggle, and then another crash against the fridge. “Listen to me: if it's a survivor they've already heard too much. Now stand down, Ramirez, or I swear to God, you'll be next.”

There were quick footsteps coming toward us. And then suddenly I was being lifted up in the air and put back down again inside one of the open laundry bags. My weight in the bag caused it to slip off the metal frame that held it open, and the bag fell over my head. I felt Theo's foot on my side, pushing me over, presumably to make me look more like the other spilled bag of laundry. And then I heard Webb shout out in surprise.

“Shit, it's a zed. A first gen, too. Was it  _ hiding?” _

“Who cares—just shoot it. It's freaking me out.”

“Why waste the bullet? Besides, Doc Jonas is going to want this one alive.”

I heard the footsteps coming closer, and then I heard Theo growl. There was a sharp crack, and then a heavy thud next to me.

“Shit—I think I got blood on my rifle.” Webb spoke peevishly. “Damn, I just cleaned this. No, not the orange ones—bind the feet with purple, and the hands with orange. And don't forget to bag the head.”

“I'll get the head. But what difference does it make what color zip ties we use on the hands and feet? I mean, I understand different colors for first and second gens, but this seems a little anal.”

“Its the way Doc wants it. You go load this one in the truck. I'll get the one in the office.”

I heard the sound of dragging.

“Are you going to . . .”

“Just load it in the truck.” Webb's voice was so menacing that I shivered inside my bag. I waited, but I didn't hear the sound of his footsteps walking away. What was he waiting for? My legs were starting to cramp, and on my shoulder I could feel the blood seeping through my bandage. I wondered how long it would take for it to seep through the laundry bag, and how long after that for Webb, who was still inexplicably in the kitchen, to notice.

I heard the click of a lighter,and then smelled smoke. Maybe he had just stayed behind to smoke yet another cigarette. The blood continued to seep out of my wound, now running out from underneath the bandage.  _ Come on, just smoke your damn cigarette and get on with it _ , I thought, and then I remembered what “it” encompassed and I felt bad for wishing such a thing onto Heather, even though she was dead. And kind of a bitch.

She had been one of the first to pick up on the “Addie's boyfriend” joke, back when Chuck and Shitzi had started it. In fact, she was probably the reason it had stayed alive all during the summer while Theo was gone. “Where's your boyfriend?” she would ask every morning when she came by the restaurant to wheedle some more money out of her dad. Soon Rick had picked up on it, and then the servers, who during the summer just happened to include a fair number of the cheerleading squad. They, of course, passed it on to Isabel, who passed it back to Theo, who . . . did nothing, further ingraining it in the school culture.

Theo.

What were they going to do with him? I told myself I shouldn't care about him any more than I did about Heather. Yeah, right. Forget the fact that we had just made out on the prep table; forget the fact that he had just saved my life, twice. I had been in love with him since I was twelve years old and nothing was ever going to change that. Including, obviously, him being dead. Or undead. Or whatever.

Finally I heard the sound of footsteps leaving the room and poked my head out of the bag; carefully pushing the bag down off of my shoulders I used my one good arm to pull myself out. Slowly I looked around the corner: the kitchen was empty. I saw my jacket lying on the prep table, along with the remains of my t-shirt and the first aid kit. Outside I heard shouts, and the sound of a truck arriving. There was the crack of a rifle, and then laughter. From the office down the hall, nothing.

Then there was the sound of something heavy being dragged, and Webb appeared, dragging Heather's body. At least, I assumed it was Heather: her head was covered in a heavy black bag, her hands bound with an orange zip tie and her feet with purple. Like Ramirez, I couldn't quite figure out the reason for the different colored ties.

He dragged the body out into the dining room. I heard the crunch of glass as he pulled it to the remains of the front window, and then his grunt of effort as he lifted it up and over the window sill. There was a shout of recognition, more laughter, and then the sound of an engine revving. And then there was silence.

I was all alone.

 


	16. Chapter 16

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Chapter Sixteen: Theo

 

 

I awoke to the sound of moans all around me, but when I opened my eyes I could only see darkness. After my hours of sharp night vision it was disconcerting to be blind, and I heard myself moaning in confusion and anxiety as well. When I realized that the sounds coming out of my mouth were the exact same timbre and tone as the noises all around me I stopped and tried to think. What had happened?

The last thing I remembered was a man standing in front of me, and then the stock of his gun coming toward my face, fast, and then—blackness. I remembered hoping, as I fell, that Addie would have the sense to stay hidden: it had become obvious to me, as I had listened to the man talk, that he wouldn't think twice about killing her.

I bit back another frustrated moan as I thought about what might have happened to her—for all I knew she could be lying right next to me. No, that wasn't true—I could figure out exactly who was lying right next to me—I just had to think. I inhaled deeply and tried to analyze the flood of smells that came through my nostrils. Blood—lots of blood. Mud. Beneath all of that, though, were a thousand different smells: the faint remains of perfumes and aftershaves, all obviously applied hours before. And then, deeper, the smell of laundry detergent, old socks, older sweat. Finally, a tangy smell, slightly yeasty and again, with an undercurrent of blood. It was, I realized, the smell of the breath all around me.

I sighed in frustration, and hyper-attuned as I was, smelled myself. There was a faint whiff of cinnamon on my breath. Of course—Addie had chewed a stick of Big Red gum, earlier, and the taste of it had still been on her tongue. And therefore, on mine.

How could it not be? Hadn't I practically shoved my tongue down her throat? I remembered her sitting on the table, and how seeing her like that, pale and vulnerable, had brought out an almost primal urge to protect her. And then how that urge had been subsumed by the even more primal urge to possess her.

I closed my eyes in shame. If I hadn't been so busy attacking her I would have heard the men coming long before they had entered the building, and we could have gotten safely away instead of ending up trapped in a corner. It had been surprisingly hard to make myself remain quietly in that corner with Addie, when part of my brain—the part that was now concerned only with hunting, and being hunted—screamed for me to rush out and attack. In fact, I might have done just that if Addie hadn't chosen that exact moment to press her lips to my jaw, freezing me in place more effectively than the shackles that now held me.

Why had she done it? My only explanation was that she had sensed the tension in me and, realizing that I was about to betray our position, had acted out of self-preservation. Surely my actions on the table just minutes before had proven that I was susceptible to that kind of distraction.

And what a distraction it had been: I shivered when I remembered the feather-soft touch of her lips on my skin. Funny how I had felt—and could remember—that, but of the blow to my face with the rifle butt there was nothing.

Now that I had the scent of cinnamon to focus on I concentrated on blocking out all of the other scents, and tried to determine if the sharp smell of cinnamon was coming from any place in the room but me. I breathed so hard inside the bag that under normal circumstances I probably would have started hyper-ventilating, but now my huge lungfuls of air brought me nothing but information. After several minutes of it though I had to conclude that the only cinnamon in the room was coming from me. I stopped, not sure if what I felt was relief at knowing that Addie wasn't in the room or anxiety. There would have been a certain comfort in at least knowing where she was.

I heard a door opening and footsteps coming across the floor. All around me the moans turned into growls as the smell of living flesh wafted into the room. There was the dull thud of wood hitting flesh, and the growls and snarls got louder. The smell of sweat increased dramatically, and I realized that I was smelling someone's fear. Not, however, the someone who abruptly spoke, pitching her voice deep to be heard over the chorus of groans all around us.

“Which one?”

“Beg pardon, ma'am?”  _ This _ voice was where the fear was coming from: my predator's instincts let me pick up on the small tremor in his voice easily. I also recognized it—it was the voice of the younger man from Enrico's, and I strained to pick out his words over the cacophony of moans and growls all around me.

“Which one was the one you found hiding?”

More sweat, more fear. “Um, I'm not sure. With the hoods on, they all look like. It was definitely a male, I'm sure about that . . .”

With an exasperated sigh the woman said, “Scan all of the males. Cross-reference their ID tags with the GPS coordinates of the building you took it in—the one that lists that building as the last place it remained for more than five minutes is the one you picked up. Understand?” I recognized her voice, too. Dr. Jonas.

“Ma'am?” The soldier clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

“Here. Give me your scanner.” There was the soft sound of buttons being pushed. “Would you mind getting that one off of me? Even with the steel mesh hoods I don't particularly enjoy them gnawing on my leg.” She spoke reprovingly, but calmly, clearly pre-occupied with what she was doing.

“What? Oh, shit, fucking zed—I mean, yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am.” There was the sound of wood hitting flesh again, and then a dragging sound.

“Where are you from, soldier?” It was not a friendly question.

“Texas, ma'am.”

A sigh. “I wasn't asking where you grew up, soldier. I was asking where you came from, before you joined Shelley Security.”

“Sorry ma'am.” More wood on flesh. Camp Rhino. My name is Ramirez. Oscar Ramirez.

“I see. And what did you call the locals in Pakistan?”

“My unit wasn't in Pakistan. We were based in Afghanistan.” There was silence, broken only by the sound of Ramirez's increasingly panicked breathing. Then he spoke again. “Hajis, ma'am. We called them Hajis.

“I see. And this was done, I assume, to distance yourself from them? To make then seem less than human, and therefore, morally easier to kill?”

“Ma'am?”

“Never mind. The point is that what you see in this room are not 'zeds.' They are not 'zombies.' They are not 'ghouls.' They are test subjects—human test subjects. They are brave volunteers who have sacrificed themselves for the good of their country and the advancement of science. And as such, they should be treated with respect. Do you understand, Ramirez?”

“Volunteers? But didn't they think that they were getting a flu shot?” There was another icy silence. “Sorry ma'am.”

“When they didn't say 'no,' in essence, they said 'yes.' That makes them volunteers. Brave volunteers. Now start the scanning. I have a vivisection I need to get back to.”

There was the sound of something being passed from hand to hand, and then the sound of more blows as the soldier made his way around the room. Finally I heard the sounds of footsteps in front of me and tensed, ready for the blow. It never came.

“Ma'am? I'm not getting a reading on this one.”

“Try again.” I lay still. There was the sound of the club again, right next to me. I tried not to react, but couldn't seem to stop my head from swiveling in that direction, or my throat from growling.

“Still nothing.”

I felt cold hands on my arm, pushing up my sleeve, and whipped my head back in that direction, but the hands were gone just as quickly.

“Give me your knife.” Dr. Jonas spoke lowly. I heard the sound of metal being slid out of leather, and then felt cold metal against my arm. There was a slight tug, and the t-shirt Addie had wound around my upper arm fell away. “Interesting.” I felt the tip of the blade go in the wound on my arm, exploring. It didn't hurt, and I forced myself to stay still. The blade was withdrawn. “It seems as if this one has had its tag removed.”

“How could someone get close enough to remove its tag? And why?” The soldier was startled enough to forget Dr. Jonas's honorific—something she obviously took offense at, judging from the way he quickly added, “Ma'am.”

“The answer to your first question is easy enough—see how docile it is? Almost as if it were listening to us.” I froze, realizing that by not fighting them I had drawn attention to myself. Dr. Jonas spoke again. “And as for the second question: I think I'd like to know the answer to that myself. Take off its hood.”

“Ma'am?”

“You heard me: remove its hood. I want to see its face.”

There was a snipping sound at my neck, and then, abruptly, there was light. It flooded my eyes so quickly that it was like taking a blow to the head, and I snarled and jerked away. The soldier lifted what I now saw was a police-style baton and moved to club me, but Dr. Jonas stopped him.

“Wait. Did you notice it didn't attack? It moved  _ away _ from us.” She dropped into a crouch in front of me and stared into my eyes. This made Ramirez visibly agitated; there was a young boy at his feet—he couldn't have been more than fourteen—who started to pull himself over toward the sound of the voices by his elbows. His hooded head bumped into the Ramirez's ankle and Ramirez whirled and brought the baton down on his head with a resounding crack. The boy went still and Dr. Jonas glared at him. “The dead ones are kept in a different room; killing them now makes my file-keeping a nightmare.”

“S-sorry ma'am.” He nudged the fallen boy with his foot—on the floor the boy stirred with a moan. “I think it's okay.”

“You had better hope he is.” She turned back to look at me. “Can you understand me?” she asked.

“Um, yes ma'am—I understand you completely. I promise, it won't happen again.”

This time she didn't look away from me to speak to him, but kept her eyes locked on mine. “Not  _ you _ .” 

I kept my eyes on her, my expression blank. She put her finger to her lips and then stood up. “Tell me more about where you found this one.”

“It was in a restaurant.”

“And?”

“Sorry ma'am?”

“ _ And— _ what else was going on? You said in your report that he was hiding—was he alone?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ma'am?”

Dr. Jonas narrowed her eyes, and he visibly paled. He took a step back, bumping into the boy he had bludgeoned before. The boy lifted his head and placed it on Ramirez's foot; there was a slight rasping sound, and I realized that he was trying to chew on Ramirez's foot through both the bag and the shoe. Ramirez ignored him, his gaze trapped by Dr. Jonas's snake-like glare. She spoke slowly, in a hiss, further reinforcing the image.

“Describe the room to me. Don't leave out any details.”

He swallowed and broke eye contact with her to stare straight ahead, as if he were picturing the room in front of him. “Well, there was the usual kitchen stuff—” There was a hiss from the doctor, and he amended that to, “I mean, there was one of those huge mixers, and some ovens, and a metal table, and there was a first aid kit on the table—”

“Was it open?”

He jumped a little, and—very gently—pushed the boy's head off his shoe with his other foot. “Yes, it was.” He thought a moment. “Oh—and there was a jacket on the table, too.”

Dr. Jonas turned back to me. “Was there? How interesting.” She reached down and picked up the t-shirt she had cut from my arm. She unrolled it and looked at the writing on the front then spun it around so that it was in front of me. It read, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” “How very enlightened of you,” she said to me. “Of course, it's a women's small, which rather makes me think that it doesn't belong to you. I think that it belongs to the person who put it on your arm—the same person who removed my ID tag.  _ And _ the same person who was using the first aid kit, because, obviously, that wasn't you.” 

She looked at me sharply then, a hard glint in her eye. “I think that somehow you were out there with a civvie—one of the uninfected. Which means that—unless you were carrying someone around for a late-night snack—you were co-operating with someone.” She turned to the soldier, and said, “Give me your gun.”

“Ma'am?” He stopped pushing the boy's head with his foot and stared at her.

She stared back at him and he unslung his rifle from over his shoulder and handed it to her without another word. She expertly flipped the safety off and put the muzzle up against my forehead—the metal felt icy cold against my fevered skin. “Stand up,” she ordered me.

I briefly considered playing dumb but I had a feeling that she was wasn't bluffing. I bent forward, and pulling my bound feet underneath me awkwardly came to a standing position, swaying back and forth unsteadily, my feet bound together so tightly that I was actually standing on the outside edges of my shoes. She smiled at me then, a smile so evil in its triumph that I involuntarily tried to take a step backwards, and fell. I landed on my side, next to the boy who had been trying to chew on Ramirez's shoe.

“Unclip its feet,” Dr. Jonas said to the soldier who was staring at me in horror; it was almost as if he recognized me. “Now,” she added sharply when he didn't move to obey her immediately. He pulled a pair of clippers out of one of the large pockets on his pants and snipped through the zip tie around my ankles. I rolled over and got back to my feet. Dr. Jonas handed the rifle back to him; he took it from her distractedly, still staring at me in confusion. “Come,” she said, stepping toward the door without looking over her shoulder to see if we were following. She was right not to: we followed along after her, both of us obedient and docile. As the door clicked shut behind us I heard her say, well under her breath, “I cannot  _ wait _ to get a look at its brain.” 

I stumbled then, and Ramirez caught me roughly by my arms before I could hit the ground again. He set me back upright with a jerk, and then, almost as an afterthought, gave me one small pat on my back. Dr. Jonas never looked behind her.

 


	17. Chapter 17

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Chapter Seventeen: Addie

 

 

I picked up my jacket and slipped it on. The blood soaking one sleeve was cold and wet against my skin, making me shiver uncontrolably. I walked out into the dining room and peered out the broken front window just in time to see tail lights turn the corner onto Front street, heading south. I remembered what I had seen earlier at the Chalet and suddenly all the reinforcements they had made started to make sense. I had assumed that the bars they were welding to the windows were there to keep people out—and I suppose they still were. But they were also there, I now knew, to keep people in.

People like Theo.

I tried not to think about what he might be going through—what they had in store. I took some comfort from the fact that his captors had taken pains to make sure that he was taken alive—surely they wouldn't go to all that trouble and then kill him. At least not right away.

I looked right, and then left, and then right again. Finally I took a deep breath and darted out the window and across the street. Hugging the buildings, I inched my way toward the Chalet. I was almost there when I heard a soft moaning accompanied by a dull scraping sound. Cautiously I looked around the corner and nearly cried out in surprise: Webb was standing less than two feet away.

I whipped my head back around the corner and tried to control my breathing.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Peterson. Mankiewics. Get your asses out here. You gotta see this.”

Curiosity got the better of me and I peered around the corner to see what he was talking about. And then I wished I hadn't. It was Tommy. His fingers were still caught in the chain ring of my bike—that was what was making the scraping sound: as he walked he had to drag the bike with him. How, I wondered, had he ever managed to get out of the drainage hauling that? I heard the sound of a bolt being thrown, and then the solid slam of a heavy door opening, and soon there were other voices in the street. The men didn't seem particularly concerned with keeping their voices down, but then again, they didn't seem particularly upset about anything. A strange attitude if we were, in fact, in the middle of the apocalypse. But not so strange if that apocalypse was only occurring in my little town .

“Shit.” One of the new soldiers spoke explosively. “God damn it. Hell.” He quickly ran through an impressive list of curse words, and then followed it up by saying, “I was supposed to pick my bike up from the shop last week.”

Webb laughed and lit another cigarette. “Now you don't have to—there's a bike for you right there.”

“I'll pass. That bike looks like it was a piece of shit even before it got a zed attached to it.”

I bristled. That was  _ my _ bike they were talking about. 

The other new soldier spoke up. “Yeah. I thought this town was supposed to be filled with millionaires. That bike certainly don't belong to no millionaire.”

There was the sound of an inhale, and then Webb spoke. “All of the millionaires are out of town this weekend. Doc made sure of that.” There was a growl, and I was startled to hear how much closer Tommy had gotten while the soldiers had been talking. Once again, however, they didn't seem at all concerned.

“Jesus, how are we going to get that thing off of its hand? I ain't dragging that whole rig up the stairs.” The new soldier spoke again. Webb grunted out a laugh, and the other soldier laughed as well.

“Watch and learn, kid.” I peeked around the corner again just in time to see the the first new soldier step up to Tommy, and when Tommy lunged forward to bite him, slam the butt of his rifle into Tommy's face. Tommy dropped and the soldier pulled a pair of wire cutters out of one of the pouches on his jacket. He bent over Tommy. What did he think he was going to do? The wire cutters looked pretty bomber but there was no way they were going to cut through my bike's chain—he'd need a chain tool to get it open.

There was a split second between my realizing that he had no intention of trying to cut the chain and my figuring out what he  _ did _ intend to cut; I used that second to look away. Meaning I didn't  _ see _ what followed, but I certainly heard it. Tommy's fingers made popping sounds as they were cut off one at a time.

“Aw man, that's fucked up.” Obviously I wasn't the only one who found the process of separating Tommy from my bike repellent.

“Get over it, Mankiewics. That's nothing compared to some of the things we've seen.”

“And done,” Webb added.

“And done,” the one who must be Peterson agreed. “Hey Webb, remember that one time, there was that three story house, with the iron fence—”

Webb choked on a lungful of smoke, he was laughing so hard. “And Franklin came up with that game where you threw them off the roof and tried to see how many you could get on the same iron spike? Man, that was something. Who won that game, anyway?”

“Franklin did, don't you remember? He must have had a plan from the start, because he started chucking the little ones right away, and then he finished up with this one that must have weighed three hundred pounds. He had  _ ten _ of them on one spike. It was no contest.” He gave a grunt of effort, and I peeked around the corner in time to see him lifting Tommy—whose head was now covered with a heavy black hood, and whose hands and feet were now bound with zip ties (still, I noticed, orange for the hands and purple for the feet)—to his shoulder.

“Hang on,” Webb said, flicking his cigarette into the middle of the street. “We got company.”

Peterson unceremoniously dumped Tommy onto the ground and unslung his rifle from his shoulder. I froze, and pulled back. I wondered what it felt like to get shot.

Then I heard what obviously Webb had already picked up on: a buzz of sound coming from the alley opposite of me. The sound was low and insistent, like the contained menace of a wasp nest at your ear, but as it came closer I began to make out the individual sounds that made up the whole. There were growls, high-pitched keening moans, and the snapping sound of teeth clicking together, over and over again. It was the eeriest sound I had ever heard, and I pressed myself back against the wall, willing the shadows to cover me more completely.

“Jesus.” Mankiewics spoke softly. This time, it didn't sound like a curse.

“Aim for the knees.” Webb's voice was flat and detached. “You kill any of them and it goes on your tally.” Just then the mouth of the alley filled with movement, and the next thing I knew Mr. Welsey came running out.

“Don't shoot!” he shouted.

Webb, Peterson, and Mankiewics never lowered their rifles. Mr. Welsey dropped to his knees in the middle of the street. “Please!”

“Get out of the way,” Webb said irritably; Mr. Welsey scrambled up to them on his hands and knees. He was followed by what could only be described as a pack. The soldiers didn't even bother to pick a target, they simply began sweeping their guns from side to side, spraying out a steady stream of bullets. Mr. Welsey put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, but I couldn't look away. As the first row fell the group behind them kept coming, heedless of their companions who were now crawling forward, trailing their useless legs behind them. This meant that the second group was stepping on the bodies of the first, often getting tangled up in their trailing limbs and then falling down themselves. None of this seemed to bother any of them, though—not the ones being stepped on, or the ones who were falling on them. The were all single-minded in their efforts to get to Mr. Welsey, and now, the soldiers. And after them, me.

Suddenly one of the ones who had fallen and was trying to stand back up was thrown backward, blown back by a bullet that had struck him full on the forehead. His arms flew out as he tumbled back, and he landed, Christ-like and unmoving, on top of those behind him.

“Cease fire!” shouted Peterson. “Mankiewics, was that you?”

“I-I don't know sir,” said a clearly rattled Mankiewics, whose finger hovered nervously over his trigger, desperate to resume shooting. “I don't think so.”

“Yeah, it was him,” said Webb laconically. “That one goes in your pile.”

“Dammit, Mankiewics,” Peterson ground out. “Switch to single shots. Maybe that will teach you to  _ aim _ at what you're shooting.”

“Yes sir,” said Mankiewics, and they all three began firing again, Mankiewics's slower tap-tap-tap a counterpoint to Peterson and Webb's more frenetic tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap. The difference in their shooting methods was not just auditory, however: Mankiewics's slower shots meant that the infected in front of him approached faster than those in front of Peterson and Webb, and before long he was faced with three of them at point blank range.

He shot the first two in both kneecaps, the force of the bullets toppling them backwards. The third one, however, managed to get its hands on the front of his uniform. With a piercing yelp it pulled Mankiewics forward and sank its teeth into his cheek. Mankiewics screamed and brought his rifle up under its jaw and pulled the trigger. The top of the creature's head exploded upwards in a shower of red, where it seemed to hang in the air, motionless, before it all slammed back down again with a heavy wet splash.

One of the other two creatures that had made it over to Mankiewics sat up, its face covered

with blood and brain. It flicked its tongue out and licked some of the grey matter off of its lips, then turned to Mankiewics and hissed. Mankiewics kicked it hard under the chin and its jaws snapped together, neatly biting off its own tongue. Seemingly unaware, it lunged for Mankiewics again. That's when Peterson came up behind it and pulled a hood down over its head. With one hand he pulled the zip tie fastener built into the bottom of it closed.

“Ah Jesus, Jesus, it bit me, one of them bit me.” Mankiewics was staring at his hand in horror; it was red from the blood that was flowing freely from the wound on his face.

“Take it easy Mank—we've all had our shots. Besides, I think that was a second gen.” Peterson was at Mankiewics side, his hand on his arm.

“A second gen? Really? Are you sure?” Mankiewics calmed down a little at that.

Webb shouted at both of them. “A little help here?” He was trying to put a hood on a burly construction worker while a small girl from my Home Ec class—I think her name was Ashley—tried to crawl up his leg.

“Just give us a minute,” Peterson shouted back at him.

“Sure, sure, take your time—I don't have anything else going on.” Webb pulled out a pistol and shot Ashley in the head. “But I'm putting this one on your count, too.”

“Fine.” Peterson looked around, and saw Mr. Welsey cowering against the wall. He walked over to him briskly. “You,” he said to Mr. Welsey.

Mr. Welsey's head snapped up at the sound. When he saw that it was Peterson in front of him, he began to cry. “Thank you. Thank you. You saved my life. My God, they were going to  _ eat _ me—”

Peterson cut him off. “You're the principal, right?”

“Yes, I'm—”

“Come over here.” Peterson grabbed him roughly by the arm and dragged him over to Mankiewics. He pointed to the corpse on the ground. “Is that one of your students?”

Mr. Welsey looked at the man on the ground—from the eyebrows up there was nothing, but the face was still visible. I thought it looked like Brody, a young kid from California who had worked the lifts. It had been his first year as a ski bum—and apparently, his last. “No, that's not one of my students.” He gazed around at the writhing mass of people on the ground. Despite his complaints Webb already had all of their heads bagged, and was starting on their hands—still with the orange zips, I noticed. “My students,” he repeated. Then he turned to look at Peterson. “You did this, didn't you? You and those damn shots.”

Peterson ran his hands through his hair. “Aw man, you really shouldn't have said that.” With one smooth move he brought his rifle up and shot Mr. Welsey in the face. Mr. Welsey's body dropped to the ground in front of him, and Peterson reached for a zip tie at his belt. “Hey Webb,” he shouted. “What color is it for bystanders again?”

I tried to digest everything I had just seen—and heard—in the last five minutes. First was that, apparently, I was safe—at least from transforming: the guy who had bitten me had obviously not been a student. Second, there was a shot to protect against being infected—one that everyone involved had already had. And third—and most immediately important—was that killing anyone who knew too much wasn't just one of Webb's sick little ideas: it was protocol. Which meant that right now I was in more danger from the soldiers then I was from the zombies. Or rather, the infected.

Which meant that what I was planning on doing was even more stupid. Not that it mattered. I had to get Theo out of there.

 

 

I slipped back the way I had come and turned down the alley that ran behind the Chalet. Remembering the story Peterson had told before I glanced up at the roof to make sure there wasn't anyone up there: there wasn't. I didn't think there would be—after all, the back of the hotel was a solid brick wall, with no windows or doors at all. At least, that's how it appeared. However, those of us who had lived in town for a while knew better.

Ten years ago, when the building had been renovated (and transformed from run-down apartments where ski-bums would sleep five to a room in the winter to a “boutique” hotel charging four hundred dollars a night), the new owners had taken out the ancient, coal-fired boiler that had supplied steam to the building's radiators since 1922. When they no longer needed coal, they no longer needed a place to store coal, and so the narrow chute from the alley to the basement had been boarded up, with weeds eventually growing up and over the entrance. I had no idea what they had done to the other end of the chute, but I did know one thing: I was about to find out.

But first I had to get the chute open from my side. I pulled back the weeds (more like small trees, actually) and ran my fingers along the edges of the plywood that had been nailed across the wooden frame of the chute's opening. On the bottom was a gap where the wood didn't quite touch, probably because the lip of the chute curved slightly to accommodate the coal shovel. I stuck the fingers of both hands underneath the lip, tried not to think about Black Widow spiders (if they had any sense, even the spiders would've left town), and pulled.

If I hadn't been on them already, the pain in my shoulder would've dropped me to my knees. I rested my head on the wood and tried to breathe through the pain. I thought about what my dad had once told me, when he had come back from some mountain bike race with his collar bone in two pieces—and third place out of two hundred racers. “It's only pain, Addie. You can't let it own you.” And then he had proceeded to get well and truly stoned before he would let my mother take him to the hospital. They had had a screaming fight in the cab of the truck, one on each side of me, with my mom accusing my dad of “self-medicating every feeling he ever had into a stupor,” and my dad accusing my mom of being “addicted to spirituality.” And me, in the middle, silently agreeing with them both. All in all, it had been a pretty typical night, back when the Roamer house (or trailer) was still a two-parent household.

I thought about my mom again, and about the man she now lived with, Swami Vestern,and imagined him watching me now the way he had watched me in California. Laughing at me. Asking me why I cared so much about the money—didn't I understand that no matter what I was always going to fail. Picturing his face, I took another deep breath and pulled. The pain was just as bad as it had been before, but I forced my self to keep imagining Swami Vestern—or, as his California driver's license said, Steve Hunt—and this time I kept pulling through the pain.

With a resounding crack the board, weakened by ten winters spent buried under the snow, split in half, throwing me backwards into the alley. I stared up at the sky. Leo the Lion was directly over my head, with the brightest star, Regulus, pointing down at me like a question mark, asking me “What's next?” Rolling to my knees first, I got up and tenderly touched my shoulder—it hurt, but it was manageable. Maybe the pain killers I had taken back at Enrico's were finally starting to kick in—my headache, at least, was gone.

I picked up the board from where I had dropped it in the alley and stashed it back behind the weeds—no need to advertise my presence. Then I looked at the opening I had created. It was about twenty inches tall and two feet wide. I decided to go in feet first, on the assumption that if my hips fit through, the rest of me would have no problem.

Holding to the top of the chute with my fingertips I climbed in. Looking at my feet I tried to see down to the bottom, but it was completely black, and I was suddenly struck by the thought that there could be anything down there. The world's largest black widow web. Somebody's old collection of rusty nails. Zombies.

I thought about Theo, and I let go.

The chute was made of metal, and that, combined with the coal dust residue that still lined it, made my descent incredibly fast and quick. In less than a second I had come to the end, or rather, come out of the end. There was a dull thud and I was showered with white dust as I shot through what must have been a piece of drywall before I landed on a carpeted floor in a brightly lit room. Obviously the power was still on  _ here.  _ I shook gypsum out of my hair, slowly got to my feet, and looked behind me.

Crap. There was no way I was going to be able to hide  _ that _ .

I had been hoping that the coal chute came down into an unused portion of the basement, but no such luck: the hole I had left in the wall was right in the middle of what was obviously a fitness center—there were treadmills and stationary bikes, as well as one of those complicated resistance machines they always were trying to sell you on late night TV. There was also a bank of TVs hanging from the ceiling—all turned to different channels. On one they were interviewing a basketball player, on another was a music video, and the third was turned to CNN. There was no sound, but from the way the anchorwoman was laughing and smiling I could tell she wasn't reporting on anything dire. I stepped forward to read the newsfeed at the bottom of the screen. Stocks prices were rising. There was a typhoon in Cambodia. The US team made the world cup finals. But about a small town in Colorado that was overrun by zombies? Nothing.

I looked back behind me: the hole I had made in the wall was enormous—almost three feet across. I thought about trying to hide it, but all of the exercise equipment looked like it was too heavy to drag over. Besides, I wasn't the only thing that was coated in gypsum dust: the blue carpeted floor was covered with it in a semi-circle that spread outwards four feet from the hole, and there were gypsum footprints leading away from the hole to where I was standing.

I sighed. So much for the stealth entrance. My only hope was that the soldiers in the building would find killing zombies enough of a cardio workout to not want to venture down here for more. I went to the door, slowly opened it and stuck my head out into the hall. It was empty. So far so good. I edged down the hallway; there was an old-fashioned elevator directly in front of me, and off to my right, a set of narrow service stairs. Right. I would head up to the top floor (the third—no building in Solanan was taller than three stories), and then conduct a methodical search on the way back down. Remembering again what Peterson had said about tossing people off of the roof I had a feeling that they would want to keep the prisoners on the top floor—for sport, if nothing else.

I briefly considered taking the elevator to the top floor, trusting in my luck not to get caught, but decided against it—at least on the stairs I had the option to retreat. And besides: my luck hadn't been that great lately. Two seconds later and I was congratulating myself on my good sense: I had barely opened the door to the stairs when I heard the ding that signified the elevator had arrived. I ducked in the stairwell and closed the door behind me, pressing my ear up to it. I heard the smooth sound of the elevator opening, and then Dr. Jonas speaking to someone sharply—I would recognize that voice anywhere.

“Come with me,” she said. “You, too, Ramirez. I'll need someone to hold the head still.”

“Ma'am?” I heard someone reply, but his was tone confused, as if he didn't understand quite what she was asking. And then they were too far down the hallway, and I couldn't hear anything else.

 


	18. Chapter 18

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Chapter Eighteen: Theo

 

 

I followed Dr. Jonas down the hall to an elevator. There was already a man and a woman inside, both of them wearing the Shelley Security Services khakis. As we stepped inside the woman turned to glare at us.

“What the hell do you think you're doing, Ramirez? You know the rules about bringing an unrestrained zed—” here she checked herself—“ah, I mean infected, or rather—” her face went blank.

Dr. Jonas sighed and said, “The word is volunteer, Collins. Civilian volunteer. And Ramirez took the restraints off on my orders. Now, if you would be so kind, please push the button for the basement—I need to get back to my lab.”

Collins visibly paled, and said, “Actually, ma'am, we were on our way up.” She stepped out of the elevator, and her companion quickly followed suit. “We'll take the next one.”

“As you wish,” Dr. Jonas said, reaching out and stabbing the button marked B with her index finger. As the doors closed they were still staring at me, their faces openly curious.

When we stepped out of the elevator and into the basement I smelled the unmistakable scent of blood, and iodine, and a strange, mineral-like scent that I couldn't quite place. And then, underneath it all, like the way the smell of the ocean trumps everything when you are at the beach, I smelled Addie. As we walked down the hallway I heard a door softly close behind me, and the smell disappeared. But there was no denying that I  _ had _ smelled it. Which meant that Addie was in the building.

What the hell was the matter with her? The whole point of me hiding her, and getting captured myself, was to keep her away from this place. She had heard as well as I had what they had said about killing anyone who knew too much—what did she think they would do to her if they found her inside the freaking command center? Damn her—she should be on her way to the school right now, to hide out with George and the others, not sneaking around inside Zombie Central. I growled in frustration, and Ramirez put his hand on my shoulder, although whether it was to comfort me or threaten me I couldn't be sure.

In any case my physical reaction was quicker than my mental one, and I spun around before I realized what I was doing. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to stop myself from snapping at his hand, which still hung, almost comically, in the air where my shoulder had been. He seemed to understand how close he had come to getting bitten, and snatched his hand back behind him.

We stood frozen like that for a few more seconds, until finally Dr. Jonas spoke and broke the silence. “Simply fascinating. But I'd be careful if I were you, Ramirez—the anti-viral you received will protect you from becoming infected, but it won't put your fingers back on if they get bitten off. And I don't have time to do it myself. Understood?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Good. Now come along and help me hold the head. I don't want it thrashing around when I'm doing the procedure.”

We entered a room at the end of the hall that had been converted into what looked like a doctor's examination room, complete with a bright light angling down from the ceiling, a low stool on casters, and a padlocked metal cabinet in the corner. The only difference was that instead of the padded table they normally had you lay on there was only a flat metal table with leather restraints hanging on off each corner. I noticed that it also had a shallow gutter all around its edges, leading down to a red bucket on the floor marked “Biohazards.” The bucket, I realized, was there to catch blood. My blood. I took a step back, right into Ramirez.

Suddenly Dr. Jonas pressed something up against my neck and I heard a sharp crack. I didn't really feel much of anything but my legs collapsed out from underneath me and I fell to the floor.

“Quickly,” I heard her say. “Get it on the table. The jolt only incapacitates them for a moment.”

She was right—already I could feel sensation coming back into my limbs. But it was too late—I was on the table, and my hands, which before had been bound behind my back with zip ties, were now secured by the restraints I had noticed earlier. I tried to kick out my legs but Jonas and Ramirez each held one in the their hands, and soon they had secured them as well. Finally I felt wide straps being tightened over my chest and knees and then I was well and truly immobilized. I felt the animal part of me grow panicky at being trapped and helpless, and a low, eerie moan slipped out from between my lips.

“Just one more thing,” Dr. Jonas said briskly from behind me, and the next thing I knew there was a leather gag in my mouth. I thrashed my head from side to side to get rid of it but it was tied too securely. Dr. Jonas examined me speculatively then, her small eyes pale beneath the fluorescent. “Yes, I will definitely need you to hold the head, Ramirez.” She stepped away to a side table, where she began laying out various pieces of surgical equipment, and, most disturbing at all, what looked like a reciprocating saw. Another low moan came from my throat.

Ramirez swallowed noisily then and spoke. “Actually, Ma'am, if it's all right with you, I'd rather not. I can find you somebody else, though.” I looked over at him. He met my eyes once, and then looked away, his skin a pale green.

“Certainly not,” Dr. Jonas said, never once looking up from sorting her equipment. “Why should I wait for you to find me someone else when you're here now?”

“But I could, uh . . .” he stalled, and I saw that he was desperately trying to think of something to say, some way to leave the room. I didn't blame him: I felt the same way. Suddenly his eyes lit up. “I could go back to that restaurant—look for the girl. The civvie that he was with. She's probably still hiding somewhere around there. I could eliminate her.”

Suddenly I didn't feel sorry for him any longer; in fact, I wanted to kill him. I felt a snarl rip itself from out of the back of my throat at the thought of him—of anyone—hurting Addie, and I struggled to free myself, causing the chains of the leather restraints to bang noisily against the table. At that Dr. Jonas turned away from her equipment and looked at me curiously as she pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and handed another pair to Ramirez. “On the contrary, I have found that survivors on their own rarely stay in one place, even when that is the safest thing to do. She probably joined up with that band that is hiding out up at the school.”

I quieted then. So she knew about that?

Ramirez spoke again, quickly. “But if she was there while he was, then I'm pretty sure that she overheard Webb and I talking. That means she knows.”

She picked up the saw and turned it on once, checking the blade. The sound was startling, and both Ramirez and I jumped at the sound. “Like I said: she's probably with that band at the school, in which case our problem will be solved by seven this morning—I oversaw the placement of the pipe bombs myself. And if she's not, well then, people never tend to believe the loners in situations like this. Trust me.”

He looked at her like trusting her as the last thing in the world he wanted to do, and said, “Will it really work? The bombs at the school, I mean. Will people really believe that this was all the work of a couple of teenage outcasts?”

Again, pale blue eyes stared him down. “They believed it at Columbine, didn't they?”

There was a gasp, but whether it came from him or me, I couldn't tell. “Ma'am?”

She sighed. “That was a joke, Ramirez. Now, put your gloves on.”

He turned, if anything, even greener. “Really Ma'am, I don't know if I can—”

She cut him off. “Mr. Ramirez, your records state that you hit a prisoner—a suspected Taliban—in the head so hard with a cricket bat that it was, for all practical purposes, a decapitation.  _ That _ was why, after your dishonorable discharge, I recruited you for this squad. So tell me: why so squeamish now?”

He squirmed uncomfortably. “That was different, Ma'am. The Taliban are little better than animals. They understand nothing but violence. But this—he seems so aware. Like back in the hallway. He could have bitten me, but he didn't.”

“And that is exactly why I need to have a look at his brain. I need to isolate whatever it is that is allowing this one to exhibit such extreme self-control. With this last experiment I think I will finally have enough evidence to convince the DOD that I have created this country's ultimate weapon against terror. Just think about it—what good will it do our enemies to hide in caves if their own people are hunting them down and trying to eat them?” Ramirez didn't answer, and she continued on, as if in a trance. This was obviously a favorite—and common—topic of discussion for her. “Of course, the Pentagon has always objected to my plan on the grounds that it would be uncontrollable—that the havoc would just spread and spread until the infected covered the planet. It wasn't enough for them that I had proven that only the first gens are capable of infecting someone, and only then for a limited time. Nor was it enough that I showed them that the effects of the virus eventually overwhelms the host, leading to death in under a week. They have seen too many movies; they want a guarantee that I can keep them under control. And with this boy I think I may just have that. Just imagine—not only could we create an army, but a general to lead that army. We could even have the leader bring the army back to us when their mission is complete, and we could administer the antiviral and release them back into the population, none the wiser for the role in which they played.”

“Ma'am?”

She raised her eyebrow at him and laughed, a high girlish sound that was so completely at odds with her hard, pinched face that both of us cringed. She didn't seem to notice, though, focused as she was on telling her story. “Of course. That's what we'll be doing here, with the prisoners—we'll administer the antiviral and then release them back to their homes.”

“But won't they remember?”

“Not clearly—we'll also give them a powerful hallucinogenic, so that nothing of the last few days will seem real. It's all part of the cover story: two young misfits who dosed the town's drinking supply with drugs and then ran wild through the town for two days, killing and destroying everything in sight. It's a terrible shame, really, what the youth of today are capable of. At least, that's what the papers will all say.” She turned on the saw again, then, and took a step toward me. “Now help me cut off the top of this boy's head.”

“Yes Ma'am.” He stepped up and placed one hand on each side of my face, holding me by the sides of my jaw. Again, I felt an involuntary growl slip out of my throat. Dr. Jonas brought the saw down to my forehead then, and all I could hear was the shrill sound of the blade. I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn't—there would soon be darkness enough to last an eternity.

And then, suddenly, the saw was gone. I looked up at Dr. Jonas. She stood with it still in her hand, turning it off irritably as she glared at someone over Ramirez's shoulder. “Well, what is it, Peterson?” she snapped. I heard someone clear their throat from over by the door.

“It's Mankiewics, Ma'am. He's been bit.”

“So? He's had his shots.”

“He'd like another, Ma'am.”

“That's completely unnecessary. Ninety-seven percent of the time the first shot is all that is needed.”

“He knows that, Ma'am. I believe that it's the other three percent he's worried about.”

She sighed. “Was he bitten by a first gen?”

There was silence for an uncomfortable moment, and then Peterson spoke. “We believe so, Ma'am.”

“You 'believe' so? What does that mean?”

“The, ah, remains, made it difficult to be sure, but—”

“Remains? Peterson,you  _ are _ aware that I want them all taken alive?” 

“Yes, Ma'am. I'm sorry, Ma'am. Bt there was a mob scene, and—”

“I don't have time for your excuses, Peterson. Where is Mankiewics now?”

“In the lobby, Ma'am.”

She put down the saw and peeled off her gloves with an irritated snap. Ramirez released my head, and I turned to watch her stalk to the locked cabinet in the corner, open it, and take out out a syringe. “These aren't free, you know, Mr. Peterson. I hope Mankiewics knows that this will be deducted from his pay.”

“If you don't mind, I'd rather it was deducted from mine. Ma'am.” Peterson spoke confidently now.

She whirled away from the open door, her face furious. “Actually, I  _ do _ mind. This will cause me enough extra paperwork as it is without having to explain why I am docking someone's pay for something they never received.” Her voice was cold, and when Peterson spoke again his voice had lost the confidence it had held so briefly.

“Yes, Ma'am.”

She turned to Ramirez now. “Stay here. We'll do the procedure as soon as I get back.”

“Yes, Ma'am.” And then she swept out of the room and was gone.

I tried to look at Ramirez, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. I pulled experimentally on my restraints, and he flinched as they rattled against the metal table. I looked over at him again, and this time I caught his eyes. He looked into mine for a moment, and then looked down at the floor. “I'm sor—” he started to say, but then the door opened and he snapped to attention, quickly biting off his words. We both looked over, expecting to see Dr. Jonas stride in. What we saw, however, was about as far from Dr. Jonas as was possible.

And, at least as far as I was concerned, infinitely worse.

 


	19. Chapter 19

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Chapter Nineteen: Addie

 

 

Sprinting on my toes to make my footsteps quieter I quickly made my way up to the top floor, pausing at every landing to listen at the door and make sure there was no one taking the stairs. I didn't run into anyone, though, and when I peeked out into the third floor hallway I didn't see anyone there, either. That made sense, I supposed—most of the security detail was probably still out on patrol.

Sticking to my original plan of searching the areas farthest away from the exercise room and then making my way back toward it I headed to the farthest door and put my ear to it. Nothing. I tried the door, glad to see that the Chalet had never installed card locks (too declasse, apparently). The knob turned easily in my hand, and I took a deep breath and pushed it open. Inside was a fairly typical hotel room—nicer than most, I guess, but nothing fancy. What made it different, though, were the weapons; the top of the dresser was completely covered with a collection of guns, knives, machetes, and things I couldn't even identify. On the bed were the pieces of what looked like a machine gun, all neatly laid out on top of a towel, and on the bedside table was a can of gun oil, still open, with a clean white rag beside it. It looked like someone had been in the middle of cleaning their gun and had been called away—but by what?

Just then I heard a toilet flush right next to me, and I saw to my horror that the bathroom door a few inches from my face was starting to swing open. With a start I jerked myself back into the hallway, pulling the door closed as softly as possible behind me. I stood where I was, barely breathing, waiting for the door to be snatched open right in front of me. A minute passed, and then another, and then I heard soft whistling coming from inside the room. I slowly let out my breath.

Okay, obviously this floor was were they housed the security detail. I looked at all of the other closed doors and mentally cringed—there had to be twenty rooms on this floor. Was I really going to have to go through that experience twenty more times? I didn't think my heart could take it.

I thought about all of the uniformed men and women I had seen coming into town over the last few days—they had seemed to be everywhere at once: reinforcing the hotel, scouting up in the woods, hanging out in front of the school. Thinking back, though, there had probably been about twenty-five of them—thirty, tops. That meant that this floor was probably all soldiers.

Probably.

Torn by indecision, I stood in the hall, knowing that every second I stood there just increased my chances of being caught. But what to do? I hated this—I liked to plan things out down to the last detail before I acted, probably because I had grown up with parents who thought that chaos was the natural order of things.

I looked at the doors again and came to a decision—I would skip this floor. As I headed back to the stairwell I tried to convince myself that it was the logical thing to do, that finding one security team member in a room made it highly likely that the rest of the rooms on the floor were also filled with more of the same—or their possessions—but the truth was I just  _ knew _ that Theo wasn't on this floor. I couldn't feel him.

I went back down to the second floor, opened the door, and peeked out. No one. I stepped into the hall. This floor had been converted into a series of conference and banquet rooms, so there were only a few doors to check. I put my ear to the first one and listened. Nothing. Of course, I hadn't heard anything at the door upstairs, either. I took a deep breath and slowly opened the door.

Boxes. This room was obviously being used as some sort of a storage room, because there was case after case of neatly stacked cardboard boxes lining each wall. I glanced at the one next to me and saw that it was labelled “zip ties-orange.” Beneath it was “zip ties-yellow” and then “zip ties-red.” I backed out, and went to the next door. I put my ear up to it and jerked back, startled by what I had heard. Moaning. Lots of it.

I slowly pushed the door open, looked inside, and then bit back a gasp. The room in front of me was large, perhaps thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep. Under other circumstances it was probably used for small wedding receptions and other parties. Right now, however, it was filled with zombies.

There must have been over a hundred of them, all bound hand and foot—and all with the same black hoods I had seen Webb using pulled over their heads. They completely covered the floor in a writhing, moaning mass of humanity.

Or rather,  _ inhumanity _ . Somehow, knowing that Theo was part of this group made me view them differently: whereas before I would have been appalled  _ because _ of them, now I was appalled  _ for _ them. How dare Dr. Jonas and her crew do this to us? These were my classmates, my neighbors, my friends. 

My love.

“Theo?” I whispered, stepping into the room and closing the door behind me.

Bad idea. At the sound of my voice all of the moaning stopped, only to be replaced with growls and snarls. The movement increased rapidly, too, but whereas before they had all been writhing in random attempts to free themselves, now they were all moving with the same purpose—to get to me. One of them rolled over to me abruptly and then sat up and unerringly brought his face to my knee, biting me through the hood. His teeth didn't break my skin, obviously, but it still hurt. I jumped back, only to trip over one that had squirmed up between me and the door. I fell, landing heavily on top of a small girl. Her head whipped around and I felt her bite me on my elbow, as another one squirmed over and started to gnaw on my foot.

My feelings of sympathy evaporated then, replaced by terror. I lashed out, kicking the one off of my foot as I elbowed the girl in the face at the same time. In a burst of energy I jumped to my feet, barely feeling the hair that was ripped out of my scalp by one who had been trying to bite my head. I scrambled over the top of them, not caring where I was stepping, only desperate to get free of them. Since they had all surged toward me at the sound of my voice the only open piece of floor was on the side of the room opposite of the door; frantically I made my way there, stepping on shoulders, legs—anything I could to get away. A one point my foot came down on somebody's face and I stumbled as their nose broke under my heel, but I kept moving until I was free of them. I stood in the corner then, trying to quiet my breathing as they thrashed and snapped at the spot where I had been.

Suddenly one of them howled, the same high keening noise that the pack outside had made, and then they were all doing it. It was unnerving, and I felt gooseflesh break out all over my arms. It sounded like a pack of hunting dogs when they found the scent of the fox.

It was also very loud. I looked around for a place to hide, certain that the noise would attract somebody's attention, but the room had been stripped bare. The only thing in it were zombies—and me. I heard the sound of running feet out in the hallway and started to panic. There was nowhere to hide. I looked around desperately—maybe there was a rug I could crawl beneath. Then I saw an empty hood at the edge of the writhing mass and knew what I had to do.

I darted forward and pulled it over my head, trying not to think about the fact that it meant that somewhere in the pile I was about to join was an un-hooded zombie. I lay down as close to the mass as I dared, shoved my feet underneath the nearest body and put my hands behind my back just as the door opened to the sounds of angry shouting.

“Shut the fuck up!”

I heard the dull thud of bodies being beaten and the pack settled down again into low moaning and growling. I tried to lay as still as possible, both to avoid the attention of the security forces  _ and _ the nearest zombie.

“What the hell set them off this time?” Someone spoke in an exasperated voice—luckily for me this obviously wasn't the first time they had had to come up here.

“Who knows?” This voice—a woman—was also exasperated. “I swear, teenagers are the worst—you never know how they'll react to the the shot. Remember that couple up north?”

“You mean the ones who were doing the nasty in the middle of the street? The girl was kind of hot. Too bad the doc was so quick to take out their brains. I probably could've gotten lucky.”

“Dude, that is  _ sick _ . But yeah, you could've gotten lucky. I asked the doc about it later and she said that sometimes instead of being driven to feed,they're driven to fuck.”

“She said 'fuck'?”

“No, dumb ass. She said 'procreate.' I wasn't sure you'd know what that meant, though.” There was silence then, and the woman laughed. “And I guess I was right.”

“Whatever.” There a dull thump. “Man, get  _ off _ me.” More thumps. “Hey, you think any of this lot swings that way?”

“Maybe. I heard that Webb found some kid in town that the doc was all excited about.”

“Why, was  _ he _ getting lucky?”

“Well, if he was, he ain't lucky no more. By now his brain is probably sitting in a jar down in the doc's office.”

I froze, barely noticing when the zombie next to me sniffed loudly and then began to growl in my ear. They were talking about Theo. About Theo's  _ brain _ sitting in a  _ jar _ . I felt a tear slide down my cheek, followed by another, and then another. There were a few more thumps, and then the sound of the door closing again but I stayed where I was, unable to move. I felt like I had received two blows at once: not only was Theo gone, but so were my brief illusions; I had actually believed that he had wanted  _ me,  _ when, in fact, he had just  _ wanted _ . The fact that it had been me had been irrelevant.

I blushed then, remembering the way I had pulled him down on top of me. He hadn't resisted, but why would he? Even the undead knew an easy lay when they saw one.

And that's exactly what I was. God, I must have been so pathetic. Just like I had been back in my trailer, nine months ago, when I had practically thrown him on my bed.

I blushed even harder at that memory: one minute he was kissing me sweetly, and the next I was sticking my hands down his pants. And then, two minutes after  _ that _ , it had all been over. As were we. Sure, he had kissed me goodbye at the airport, but what else could he have done? He didn't want to make a scene. Not Theo. Theo hated scenes. He hated standing out. Being stared at.

God—he would hate having his brain in a jar.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time: suddenly, everything that had happened between Theo and I at the Prom just seemed so  _ dumb _ . Yes, he had hurt me. Yes, he had broken my heart. But he had more than made up for it when he had saved me from the construction worker earlier, and when he had hidden me at Enrico's, giving up any chance of escaping himself.

Giving up, as it turned out, his  _ life _ . For me. I thought about everything that had happened to me during the last year and it was like a veil was lifted from my eyes. Free of my hurt and resentment I could now see all of the times Theo had tried to make amends, and all of the times I had rebuffed him. And, with my newfound clarity, I realized that I had been churlishly rebuffing his friendship not because I had been wronged, but because I had wanted  _ more _ .

I had wanted Theo to love me like I loved him. And, like the true friend that he was, he had tried—and failed. And I hadn't been able to forgive him. And now he was gone and I'd never have the chance again. I'd never have the chance to make it up to him.

Or would I?

I sat up and pulled the hood off my head. The zombie nearest to me sank his teeth into my arm. “Get  _ off _ me,” I said under my breath, and punched him in the head before I stood up and made my way to the door. In a few minutes I was heading back down the stairs, suddenly remembering that not only had the soldier said that Theo was “down” in Dr. Jonas' office, but also that I had heard Dr. Jonas herself saying to someone, “I need you to hold the head.” I started to sprint, not caring how much noise I was making—it might be too late for me to save Theo but I'd be damned if I was going to let them humiliate him after he was gone. As I threw open the door to the basement I saw a fire extinguisher clipped to the wall and quickly grabbed it—I'd need something to break the jar. Still running, I came to a door at the end of the hall, and fired up by anger, adrenaline and remorse, threw it open violently.

And that's when I saw, to my surprise and delight, my second chance.

 


	20. Chapter 20

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Chapter Twenty: Theo

 

 

I could only stare in horror when Ramirez moved his hand to his gun as Addie—my Addie—leapt into the room with something large and red in her hands. There was a gurgling hissing sound and then Ramirez was thrown backwards as Addie sprayed him full in the face with the contents of a fire extinguisher. When he lifted his arms up to protect his eyes Addie swung the canister against the side of his head, knocking him to his knees. I couldn't believe it: she was magnificent, like some kind of avenging angel, crying and cursing at the same time as she hit him over and over again with the extinguisher. For a minute it even looked like she was going to win—and then Ramirez started to fight back.

First his fist shot out and caught Addie in the stomach. She gave a grunt of pained surprise and fell forward, dropping the fire extinguisher. Ramirez followed that with a brutal uppercut to Addie's jaw that knocked her off her feet.

Watching him hurt her I felt the rage descend over me, and suddenly I longed to feel his jugular tearing beneath my teeth. I heard, as if from a long way off, a dull rhythmic clanging, and realized that the entire table I was strapped to was jumping up and down with my frantic efforts to free myself, and that above that was the sound of my growls and snarls. And then I heard something that silenced me completely—it was Addie, and she was begging.

“Please—don't hurt him.”

Don't hurt  _ him? _ She was getting her ass kicked and she was begging for mercy for  _ me _ ? The unlikeliness of that statement obviously puzzled Ramirez as well. “Don't hurt  _ him?  _ Who are you talking about? And where the hell did you come from?” He stood up and wiped white foam out of his eyes. Addie glared up at him.

“Theo. His name is Theo. And I came here to get him. He's  _ mine. _ ” She said the last part so fiercely that it filled me with a fiery joy. She stood up then and carefully moved her jaw from side to side, wincing.

Ramirez shook his head. “You're the girl, aren't you?” He reached out and grabbed the sleeve of her blue North Face jacket. “The one he was with. The one he was protecting.” He said the last few words in a daze, his eyes troubled. “Why?” he finally asked.

Addie lifted her chin. “Because,” she said, and then her eyes met mine, briefly, before she dropped them back to the floor. She looked back at Ramirez. “Because he's my friend. And he needs my help.” She took a step forward, her eyes still bright red from her tears. “And now I need your help, too. Please. I heard what you said, back in the kitchen. I know you're not like that other one.”

I hissed. What was she doing? The very reason I had hid her before was because they had been talking about killing any survivors who knew too much—were  _ still _ talking about it, if what Jonas had said about the bombs at the school was true.

The bombs. In case there was a chance that Ramirez let Addie go I had find a way to tell her about the bombs. I started to struggle again and Addie quickly stepped around him to get to me. She was untying the gag from my mouth when he stopped her.

“Don't do that. He's dangerous. He almost bit me earlier.”

Addie shot him a look over her shoulder and said, “If you were going to take out  _ my _ brain I'd bite you, too.” And then she took off the gag. She ran her fingers over my lips and her own lips pursed in concern. “When was the last time you gave him any water?” Her presence, so near to me then, was too much to bear, and I turned my head so that I could kiss her fingertips. 

Ramirez saw the motion and jerked her hand away. “See? It doesn't matter how docile he seems—you can't trust a zed.”

Addie jerked her hand back from his grip. “And I told you,” she said, “his name is  _ Theo _ . And I trust him with my life.” And then, quicker then Ramirez could react, she kissed me.

Compared to what we had shared back at Enrico's this was a chaste kiss, our lips touching softly, almost shyly. It reminded me of our first fumbling kiss a year—a lifetime—ago. Maybe it did the same for Addie, because she pressed her forehead to mine and sighed deeply before she said, “Oh, Theo. What are we going to do?”

“ _ Fuck _ .”

Addie whipped around to stare at Ramirez, who was swearing with feeling. Compared to some of the things he was saying, “fuck” seemed almost tame. He pressed his hands to his face for a moment, then spread his fingers so that he could see us again. I jerked against the restraints and Addie reached out and laid her hand on my shoulder; her soft, cool touch reminded me of what was at stake, and I stilled. She squeezed my shoulder then, and I couldn't resist turning my head and brushing my lips across her fingers. Smiling a tight, tense smile, she said, “It's okay; Theo; I know.”

Did she? It seemed unlikely. Until tonight I hadn't even known myself how much her absence in my life had affected me. I stared at her now, my enhanced vision letting me see every pore, every hair. She was perfect. There was a bead of sweat starting to form in the hollow above her lips, and I longed to taste it. I growled then, the sound slipping out before I could stop it. Addie frowned, but didn't remove her hand from my shoulder.

“Hush, now,” she said mildly.

I hushed.

At that Ramirez gave a low, mirthless laugh; running his fingers through his hair he looked at Addie sharply and said, “How did you get in here?” Addie cocked her head at him, clearly trying to determine his motivation for asking. He sighed in frustration and added, “What I mean is, can you get back  _ out— _ if I let you go?” He then started swearing again, under his breath.

“I'm not leaving without Theo.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Ramirez looked away. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he said again, this time with even more feeling. And then he was unlocking the restraints around my legs, torso, and chest. Addie quickly moved to untie my arms, and then he was letting me go. I sat up quickly and scrambled off the table; Ramirez took a step back from me and put his hand on the gun at his side, then looked at Addie once more before he took the pistol out of its holster and turned it so that it was butt first. “Here,” he said. “Take this.”

Addie looked at the gun, and patting her pocket said, “Thanks—but I've already got one.”

Ramirez looked at her in amazement. “If you had a gun why did you attack me with a fire extinguisher?”

Addie looked sheepish. “I forgot it was there. I kind of got caught up in the heat of the moment—I thought I was too late.” And then she reached over and took my hand in hers. I pulled her to me then, and as she wrapped her arms around my waist and put her head on my chest I put my arms around her shoulders and looked at him over the top of her head. He looked like a man tormented.

“Just go,” he whispered.

Addie sniffed once—was she crying again?—and taking my hand again pulled me toward the door. “Thank you,” she said.

We were almost there when he stopped us. “Wait,” he said. He quickly made his way over to the cabinet in the corner. The door was open, the padlock dangling from the door, and he reached inside and took out one of the same syringes Dr. Jonas had taken out earlier. “Take this. I think it will help him.”

“You  _ think _ it will help?” Addie asked him, hesitatingly.

Now it was his turn to look sheepish. “In case you haven't noticed, I'm new here.”

Addie took the syringe and put it in her pocket. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you again.” And then she opened the door and pulled me out into the hall.

She surprised me by not leading me toward the elevator or stairs, but rather in the opposite direction. We came to the end of the hall and went through a door marked “Fitness Center.” Once inside, I saw immediately how she had gotten in—the hole in the wall was unmistakeable. I saw the drywall on the floor, and the dusty footprints that led to the door, and sniffed; of course—the mineral smell I had smelled earlier, together with Addie. I pulled her back to me then and buried my nose in her hair, inhaling her scent. She gently pushed me away.

“I know it's hard for you, Theo. I understand that now. But we need to get out of here.”

What was she talking about? Before I could really process what she was saying she had pulled me over to the hole and stuck her head inside it, looking up. She pulled it back out and said, “Okay, just think of it as a chimney.”

I looked inside and saw what she meant—the coal chute she had come through angled up diagonally for a few feet but then went straight up to a hole eight feet up. We would have to climb out by pressing our backs against one side of the wall and our feet to the other, just like when you climbed up a large crack in a wall. Or rather, a “chimney.” Of course, most rock chimneys had the advantage of providing your feet—usually clad in sticky shoes—with  _ some _ kind of grip. The walls of this chute, however, were smooth metal.

I heard the sound of the elevator arriving, and gestured for Addie to go first. She scrambled up the short incline on her hands and knees, and I followed close behind. When she got to the vertical part she shoved her shoulders against one wall and then put her feet up against the the other. She wiggled her shoulders to gain a few inches, and then moved her feet up some more as well.

Suddenly her face drained of all color and I smelled fresh blood. When she gritted her teeth and shoved her shoulders up again the smell of blood was stronger. Of course—the wound in her shoulder—it had to be killing her. And of course—she wouldn't mention it at all. I stepped up underneath her then and, putting my hands on her butt, lifted her as high as I could. Under any other circumstances there would have been nothing I would have enjoyed more than the chance to put my hands on Addie's ass, but the imminent danger we were in—together with the fact that my hands had tightened even further into nearly useless claws, making any sensory input I got from them virtually nil—dampened my enjoyment of the situation considerably.

Addie managed to grasp the edge of the opening; I put my hands under her feet and pushed again, and she was out. My relief at the thought that she was out of the building was tempered by my fear about what was waiting for her outside. I growled in frustration until she poked her head back through the top and said, “All clear—come on.”

Down the hall I could hear Dr. Jonas's angry shouts as she discovered I was gone. I thought about the huge hole in the Fitness Center wall, and how little time we had before it was discovered. Time that Addie couldn't afford. I should turn back now, and allow myself to get caught. But then again, if I let her go now, wouldn't she just go up to the school? Again, I growled in frustration. Addie heard it and misinterpreted it as my refusal to come. She glared down the chute at me.

“Theo, if you don't come up here  _ right now _ I'm coming back down.” And then she put her leg over the edge.

I snarled, and she pulled it back out and turned to glare at me again. “Then come  _ on _ .”

That was it then: the only way to get her out of here was to go with her. Resigned and relieved, I quickly made my way up the chute and into the alley with her. Behind me I could hear a shout as the door to the Fitness Center was opened and our escape route was discovered. Addie must have heard it too, because she looked at me in alarm. Grabbing her by the wrist I took off running in the direction of the school at the same time I looked at the watch on my other wrist: it was two o'clock in the morning. That meant we had five hours for me to figure out a way to tell her about the bombs.

 


	21. Chapter 21

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Chapter Twenty-One: Addie

 

The feeling of relief I had running with Theo's hand in mine was so overwhelming that I felt giddy and had to stifle the urge to giggle. Then Theo stumbled and any laughter inside me died. He caught himself before he fell, but I had seen what had happened: his feet were starting to curl in on themselves the same way his hands were. I had first noticed it in the hallway at the hotel—it seemed like when he wasn't concentrating on it he had a halting, lumbering gait, almost like someone who had suffered a stroke. Which, for all I knew, he had—I had no idea what the drugs Dr. Jonas had given to him and the others actually did.

Just like I had no idea what the drug in my pocket would do. I believed Ramirez when he told me he thought it would help, but like he said, he was new. He probably had no more idea of what was in the syringe then I did. For all I knew the syringe could just contain more of the same. It could make Theo worse. It could even kill him.

When we arrived at the school I was struck by how different it looked in the dark. In fact, with its steeply angled roofline and wide expanse of Southern facing windows it looked entirely like the factory that it was. It also looked like a terrible place to take refuge from a zombie invasion. I tried the front door and felt the knob turn easily in my hand. Was that good or bad? Did it mean that there were people inside, waiting to help us, or that the zombies had already gotten in, and now  _ they  _ were waiting? Then I looked at Theo's hands and realized that he—and the rest—probably couldn't turn the handles to open most doors. Remembering the zombie that had come at me out of the window, though, and looking at the long row of windows that lined the school, I didn't think that that put them at too much of a disadvantage.

I held open the door and Theo and I stepped inside. My dad had said that everyone was holed up down in the basement, the nearest entrance to which was over by Mr. Welsey's office. I could thank my experience with the grease trap for that knowledge—I had had to find the janitor to get a bucket, and had heard Mr. Welsey talking to someone on the phone as the janitor and I had passed the open door to his office. Then I remembered seeing Mr. Welsey shot down in front of the hotel, and I amended that in my mind to Mr. Welsey's  _ former _ office—come next year there would be a new principal at Solanan High School.

If there even  _ was _ a Solanan High School next year.

Or a Solanan.

Or, for that matter, a next year.

Theo started to move toward the basement entrance, his shuffling gate even more pronounced on the smooth tile floor. I thought about what my dad had said—“Shoot on sight”—and stopped him. “Wait,” I said. “We need to do something to disguise you.” He cocked his head at me quizzically, and I realized that he probably didn't understand what he looked like now. Which was good, because at first glance he looked pretty freaky. It wasn't just his gait: it was also his flat black eyes and skin that, despite his racing heartbeat and high temperature, was starting to turn pale and waxy.

And then there was the way his hands and feet were starting to betray him: it was almost as if he were dying from the outside edges in. It was, I thought, like someone who was freezing to death; his body pulling all of its resources back to its core. “Give me your hand,” I suddenly said, and he obediently placed his curled fingers in mine.

I flipped it over and felt his fingertips: they were ice cold. I ran my own fingers up to his wrist then, and felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

Panicked, I put my head against his chest and was comforted to hear his heart still beating wildly. I slid my hand up to his neck then, and felt the beat of his pulse in his carotid artery. Theo moaned once, low and urgent, and then he pushed me up against the wall.

His hands slid around under my butt as he lifted me up and against him, pushing my back against the wall as he leaned into me. His mouth came down on mine then, and he kissed me with a fierceness that made the scene back at Enrico's look like a peck on the cheek. When I finally dragged my mouth away from his, just to catch my breath, he slid his lips along my jawline to my ear, where I could hear his own desperate breathing before he softly bit down on my earlobe.

The moan this time came from me, and I ran my fingers up through his inky black hair. “Theo,” I whispered, and then his mouth was back on mine, and I was kissing him as desperately as he was kissing me, bringing my teeth down gently on his bottom lip until he growled and sighed all at once. His hips started moving rhythmically against my own then, and I could feel, as he moved against me, just how badly he wanted me.

Almost as badly as I wanted him to want me.

But was it really me he wanted? The memory of what the security officers had said—about some zombies being driven to feed, and others to “procreate”—splashed over me like cold water, and while my body was still enjoying what Theo was doing to it, my mind became detached. Pretty soon my body followed, and I became motionless in Theo's arms. He kissed me a few more times, each kiss eliciting the same little thrill in my stomach that was squelched as soon as my brain got wind of it, and then he stopped.

He set me back down on my feet and looked away, clearly struggling to control himself. I felt terrible—it was probably hard enough for him to maintain a semblance of self-control, and here I was throwing myself into his arms. “I'm sorry, Theo,” I said. My voice was rough. He didn't look at me, and I cleared my throat and went on. “I have an idea. Come with me.”

I trotted down the hall to my locker and quickly opened it. It was nearly empty—amazing how getting off the college track really freed up your locker space. I pulled a white hoodie out of the bottom of the locker and said, “Sorry it's so manky—I spilled grape juice on it in Home Ec last week and never took it home. But I think it should work.” I looked up at Theo, but he wasn't looking at me: he was looking at the small mirror that was hanging on the inside of my locker door.

He reached up to touch his face and then drew back, obviously startled by the sight of his own crabbed hand. With a look of determination he put his hand up again, and, peering closely into the mirror, poked at his waxy skin and dry lips. “Here,” I said, grabbing a water bottle from the top shelf, “Drink this. It'll help.” He tried to take it from me, but the bottle slipped out of his hand. I caught it before it could hit the ground and took off the cap. “Let's try that again.” I held the bottle up to his lips and he took a few swallows. “Better?” I asked. He just looked away, his face full of despair. Then suddenly he became animated again, and started to grab at my coat pockets.

His sudden lunge, together with the look of despair on his face made me think for a moment that he was going for the gun, and I tried to slap his hands away. But his hands weren't on that pocket—they were on the other one. The one with the syringe. That didn't make me any happier. “Theo, we don't even know what it is. It could make you worse. It could  _ kill _ you.”

He looked at me for a second, and then, quicker than my eye could follow, his hands darted out and grabbed my wrists. The water bottle tumbled out of my grip and chugged out its contents on the floor, but neither one of us paid it any attention. Instead Theo took my left hand and placed it on my right wrist. And then he placed it on his own wrist, the same place I had tried to feel for his pulse earlier, with no success. The he moved my hand even farther up his arm, to the crook of his elbow—again, I felt nothing—only cold tissue.

He dropped my hands. He had made his point: he was already dying. “But you might still get better,” I said in a small voice. “Or at least not get worse.” Theo shook his head and gestured at my pocket. He was right—it was his only chance. “Okay,” I said. “Push up your sleeve.”

Theo pushed up his t-shirt sleeve; the makeshift bandage I had put on it earlier, I noticed, was no longer there. He turned to me then, to give me a better angle, and I sucked in my breath in consternation. Once, when I was ten, one of Dad's buddies had dropped by and shown us pictures of his recent K2 summit bid; they had had to turn back because one of their party had gotten such a bad case of frostbite that they had been worried about gangrene.

Theo's arm looked just like the picture's of that guy's toes. The skin around the injection site was completely black and dead looking. Theo heard my gasp and looked at his arm. He growled low under his breath, a menacing sound of unhappiness. “I think we should use the other arm,” I said.

He looked up at me, peering deeply into my eyes for a minute as if he were searching for something there. His own eyes were completely expressionless in their blackness. With a snarl he pushed up his other sleeve. I took the syringe out of my pocket, uncapped it, and held it up to what little light there was coming in from the stars outside. “Can you see any bubbles?” I asked Theo. He shook his head. “Okay. Here goes.” And then I jabbed the needle into Theo's arm.

He didn't move at all as I depressed the plunger; when I pulled the needle back out a single drop of blood appeared at the injection site. For some reason that made me feel hopeful. I looked up at Theo and smiled. He bared his teeth at me, which, I was pretty sure, was as close as he could get to a smile right now. As I helped him put the hoodie on I asked him, “How long did it take after the other shots for you to feel something?” And then, realizing that he couldn't really answer that, amended it to, “I mean, how many hours?”

He cocked his head to the side and considered my question for a moment before he held up one hand and then reached over and pulled down his thumb and pinkie so that only three fingers remained upright.

“Three?” I asked.

He shook his head in frustration.

“Eight?”

He nodded, and I smiled at him again. “See? We're getting better at this all the time.” It was hard to tell, but it seemed like he rolled his eyes at that. I zipped the hoodie up under his chin and pulled the hood down low over his forehead, trying my best to shade his eyes. “Duck your head a little,” I ordered. He obeyed, and I tried to pull the hood even lower, gaining perhaps half an inch. “I guess that'll have to do,” I sighed. “Just try and keep your eyes lowered. You know, like a surly, hoodie-wearing teenager would.”

He looked up at me then and raised one eyebrow. One thing Theo had never been was surly.

“Just fake it, okay?” He nodded and ducked his head. I looked him over, checking for anything else that would give him away. His hands, I noticed, were looking especially crabbed. “Put your hands in the pockets,” I said. “And hunch your shoulders some more.” He did everything that I asked. “Okay,” I finally said. “Let's go.” We set off for the basement.

 


	22. Chapter 22

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Chapter Twenty-Two: Theo

 

 

I followed Addie down the stairs to the basement, my mind racing. I tried to put what I had seen in the mirror out of my mind but it was difficult; watching Addie walk down the stairs in front of me brought back enticing memories of my hands cupping her bottom just a few minutes ago, which in turn brought back memories of the way she had stilled in my arms. At the time I had thought that she had just been impatient to find her father—and rightly so. It wasn't the time to be making out next to the lockers, no matter how badly I wanted her.

But then I had seen myself in her mirror and I understood all too well why she had stopped me.

I was a monster.

I thought back to the times I had kissed her earlier in the evening and cringed at how completely I had misread her signals. She wasn't attracted to me; she pitied me. In fact, she probably still hated me—it was only her innate sense of goodness that was making her help me now.

For perhaps the millionth time I rued the set of circumstances that had let her slip out of my life. If only I hadn't wanted so desperately to go to that summer art institute. And, if the truth were told, if only I hadn't considered Addie to be a “done deal”—after all, not once in the five years we had known each other had she ever failed to be there for me. It had been my certainty about  _ that  _ that had made it all too easy for me to take her for granted.

I had never even considered that Addie might be hurt that I would break our date for the prom—after all, we both considered the whole thing to be something of a joke, a “bourgeois throwback to the fifties,” as Addie had once put it.

Maybe if I had included more in the note I had left for her—a promise to make it up, maybe. As it was I had hastily scribbled a few lines on my way out the door and then dropped it off with her father. All the note had said was “A—opportunity of a lifetime. Am taking Dad's soon-to-be business partner's daughter to prom tonight, in exchange for tuition at the Met. Will stop by later to tell all. --T.”

Then, later at the dance, when she had shown up anyway and made such a scene I had just been annoyed that she would ruin this opportunity for me. Of all people  _ she _ knew how much I longed to have a chance to really work on my painting, something that was never going to happen in Solanan, Colorado. When I had lost my temper and said that she was mistaken, that I  _ wasn't _ her boyfriend, I had thought that she would understand what I was really saying—that I was so much more than just a  _ boyfriend.  _ I was her  _ lover.  _ Her  _ soul-mate.  _ And, true, I had said it to snap her out the fit she had been about to throw. To stop her from making a scene. I had thought, arrogantly, that I would just be able to make it up to her later, when I came to see her at her trailer. In fact, I had very nearly embarrassed myself on the dance floor with April by thinking about exactly  _ how  _ I would make it up to her later.

But I never got the chance. George had been waiting for me when I had come by later that evening, standing in the trail that led up to their compound. I had never seen him so furious. Actually, I had never seen him furious at all.

“The next time you come through my door you had better be wearing a tux and carrying flowers,” he had said, his voice shaking with anger. “But for now,  _ get out _ .”

Coward that I was, I had left.

And stayed away the rest of the weekend. I told myself that I was giving Addie a chance to “cool off,” but the truth was, I was afraid to face her. Somehow I knew even then that I had screwed up everything.

Monday morning had proven me right. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me. We went through the last few weeks of school like that, and then I had gone, off to my coveted art institute, where I had brooded all summer long, painting dark pictures filled with golden-eyed girls.

It was only when I got back at the end of the summer and I first heard the whispers about “Addie's boyfriend,” that I realized what she had been going through in my absence. I had never realized it, but apparently the entire town had been holding its collective breath for the last five years, just waiting for our rich boy/poor girl love story to end badly. Apparently all our years of friendship had been breaking the rules, and now Addie was the one who had to pay. I was stunned: I hadn't realized how deeply the class divisions ran in Solanan. Nor had I realized that five years of Addie's friendship had given me carte blanche to enter either world easily. Because of my family, I was accepted at all of the best houses. But because of Addie, I had been accepted by all of the best  _ people _ .

When I had been with her I had been able to travel freely in both circles: her presence allowed me to experience what it was like to slip in through the back door, as we had that first day at the bakery, and my money allowed me to understand what it was like to always have the option to walk in through the front. On the whole, I had usually preferred the back.

Now, following Addie down the stairs and into the basement, I felt a wave of longing for those days so deep that I growled at the memory. Addie turned to look at me. “What is it, Theo? Do you hear something?”

I shook my head, and then, unable to stop myself, reached my hand up to her face and traced my curved fingers across her lips. She frowned and looked down, and I cursed myself for having disgusted her yet again. “Try not to . . . make noises like that . . . when we're with the others, okay? And don't forget—keep your hands in your pockets,” she said, looking up into my eyes. I nodded and slipped my hand back into my pocket.

Great. If I couldn't make noises, and couldn't show my hands, how in the hell was I going to be able to tell her and George about the bombs? If it came down to it I knew I could just physically pick Addie up and carry her away to safety before morning, but I also knew that she would never forgive me if I saved her and left her father to die. I  _ had _ to figure out a way to let her know.

We were passing through a maze of piping—this building, like so many of the older ones in Solanan, was still heated with steam radiators—when I heard the sound of a gun being cocked. Without thinking about it I grabbed Addie and spun her behind me. A growl started to erupt out of my throat, but before I could make another sound Addie's hand was clamped over my mouth, her eyes glaring up into mine, reminding me to stay quiet.

“Hello?” she said quickly, obviously trying to cover up the noise I had made. “Is there somebody there?”

A man stepped out of the shadows in front of us—it was Bill Hart, one of George's best friends. He made his living—such as it was—tuning skis in the winter and bikes in the summer. He stepped forward quickly now, clearly relieved to see Addie. “Addie! Where the hell have you been? We practically had to tie George up to keep him from going out and looking for you—he's been going crazy.” He pulled her into a bear hug, and then looked at me curiously. I dropped my eyes to his feet. “Who's this?”

“It's Theo Frank.”

“It is?” He stepped forward. Addie slipped her hand around his waist and steered him away from me. “He's in shock,” she whispered. “He can't really talk right now.”

Bill chuckled under his breath. “Leave it to you to find a way to rescue your  _ boyfriend _ ,” he said as he turned back around. “Come on; follow me.”

Really? The boyfriend crack? Even now? I felt the rage start to build up inside me and was stepping forward, my hands reaching out to grab Bill by the neck, when Addie turned and glared at me over her shoulder as if she had been reading my thoughts. She snapped her fingers to get my attention and then shook her head, clearly saying, “Knock it off.” I put my hands back in my pockets and ducked my head again, still seething. Bill, having seen nothing except Addie's reaction, turned to her and said, “What's wrong?”

She sighed. “Don't you think that joke's a little  _ played _ ? I mean, bottom line is Theo's a survivor; of course I'm helping him. I would help anyone. Even  _ you _ .” She poked him in the ribs as she said the last part, and he grunted.

“I know Addie—you were always too nice for your own good. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you'd even save  _ him _ .” Before Addie could reply—if she even had a reply to that—we came to a thick metal door. There was an old yellow sign with black triangles on it and the words “Fallout Shelter,” written in black below. Bill hesitated then, and took a step toward me. Something about me clearly still didn't seem right to him. 

Before he could get any closer though Addie put her hand on his arm and said “What's with the gun? I though you were a pacifist now.”

The distraction worked. Bill looked away from me, grinned, and said, “What I said was 'I don't fight no more.' That's not quite the same thing.” Still grinning, he opened the door and called in: “Hey George—got someone here to see you.”

The room was about forty feet long and ten feet wide, with a deep row of metal shelves filled with blankets and dark green wooden boxes stenciled with words like “water” and “medical supplies” lining one wall. There was also several small folding tables set out, each with it's own lantern and collection of shell-shocked looking survivors gathered around. At one of the tables there was a card game going on—it was from this table that George ran up and grabbed Addie, crushing her to his chest before he turned to look at me. Before I glanced back down at the ground I saw that his eyes were bright red—and, smelling the closed up air in the shelter, for once they weren't red from smoking pot.

“Where the hell have you been?” he suddenly barked at Addie, and then, turning to me, directed his anger my way. “You?” he said, and took a step toward me. The instinct to attack in the face of such an obvious threat was almost overwhelming. Then Addie put her hand on my arm, and I was able to control myself—barely.

“Dad.” Addie had a hand on George's arm as well. “Theo saved my life.” She briefly related the story of our attack by the construction worker, leaving out, I noticed, the part about getting bit. Fortunately, George wasn't too interested in details—he was too busy letting Addie have it.

“What were you doing back in town? I told you to come straight here.”

“I had to find out what was going on.”

“We were already taking care of that. Ben Welsey is down there right now, talking to that doctor woman—the one with all the soldiers. I'm sure  _ they've  _ still got some kind of communication with the outside world—that is, if there even  _ is _ an outside world anymore,” he added under his breath.

“There is—this is only happening in Solanan. And Dr. Jonas is the one behind it. Dad—she's running an experiment on the whole town.” Addie's voice was filled with outrage. She became even more infuriated when George patted her on the arm and spoke to her in a tone of distracted condescension.

“Oh, come on Addie—an experiment? That's a conspiracy theory worthy of your mom.”

Addie paled, and George quickly retracted what he said. “Aw, Jesus, Addie, I didn't mean—you know—really, I didn't—” but it was too late: Addie had turned and stalked away, muttering, “Forget it,” under her breath. He turned to me. “I really stepped in it that time, didn't I?” He shook his head ruefully, and then brightened. “Still, if she can forgive you I guess she'll be able to forgive me, huh?” He looked at me, clearly waiting for an answer. I looked over at Addie, but she was turned away from us, her lips moving as if she was talking to herself. I realized that she was counting to ten. She finished and came back over to us.

“Dad, I” she began, but George cut her off.

“No, Addie, you're right. I'm an ass.”

She sighed. “I never said that.”

“But you thought it.”

“No, I didn't.” George raised one eyebrow in disbelief, and Addie sighed again. “Ass is  _ so _ much milder than what I was thinking.”

George laughed. “Thass my girl.” I noticed then that his speech was slightly slurred. I glanced over to where he had been sitting and saw there was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the table. He turned to me. “And now I'm going to have a little talk with Theo.” He beamed at me.

“Dad, Theo isn't really—”

He cut her off again. “Nonsense. Why don't you go get something to eat? Maybe talk to Zane over there—he looks like he could use a friend.”

I looked over and saw Zane huddled in a corner, wrapped in a blanket and mumbling to himself. The last time I had seen him he had been falling over the edge of the railing at my house—into a two-hundred foot drop. How had he survived that? Addie saw him too, and frowned. “Zane? She asked. “Are you okay?”

Zane looked up at her, his eyes unfocused. “Addie?” he replied.

She stepped toward him, peering into his eyes. One pupil was clearly larger than the other. She held up one finger in front of his face. “How many fingers do you see, Zane?” she asked.

Before I could hear his reply George had taken me by the arm and was pulling me over to a bench opposite, stumbling slightly as we went. He turned to speak to me conspiratorially, his whiskey-soaked breath washing over me. “There, that should keep her occupied for a little while. Plenty of time for us to have a little chat.” I looked back at Addie and Zane, and saw that he was right: Addie was clearly preoccupied with helping Zane.

As we sat down I looked around the room some more, searching for a way to let somebody know about the bombs. Where was Addie's dry erase board when I needed it? George patted me on the knee in a friendly gesture, which somehow only made the next few words that came out of his mouth even more chilling, despite the conversational tone he was using.

“You know, Theo, I still stand by what I said before—don't come back to my house unless you're wearing a tux and carrying flowers. And one more thing,” he said, his voice dropping a level, “ if you break her heart like that again, I'll kill you. Understand?”

He looked at me, and I nodded quickly.

“Good. You know,” he said, now smiling at me, “I'm actually kind of amazed we're having this conversation at all.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes, trying to see if he was serious—since I hadn't said a word since I had come in, we  _ weren't _ having this conversation—he was. But I saw that, in typical drunken self-absorption, he was quite content to carry on both sides himself. 

“My god, that was a rough night,” he said quietly. “A rough summer, come to think of it. What with Addie's grandfather, then her mom and that 'end of the world' business, and then you.”

I turned to him fully then, curious. I knew about Addie's grandfather—his illness, and subsequent death had been what had taken Addie away the night I had originally asked Addie to the prom. And I knew about me, of course. But about Addie's mom, and the “end of the world business,” I knew nothing. I had always assumed that the split between her and George had been amicable; she had been living in California for several months taking care of her father before Addie had gone out to join her, and Addie had mentioned to me several times how much happier her mom had seemed when they had talked on the phone. Addie hadn't seemed particularly upset about their impending split—if anything, she had seemed happy for them. So what was George talking about? I tried to convey by my body language that I wanted to hear more, but was at a total loss as to how to accomplish that without looking like a zombie mime. Fortunately the whiskey gave George all the prompting he needed.

“You know, I still can't believe Addie's mom would do that to her. Or that Addie would let her get away with it. Who cares if some ancient Indian calendar tells you the world's going to end? That's no reason to take away Addie's future  _ now _ .” He looked at his hands, flaking off a scab from one of the knuckles onto the floor. The smell of fresh blood came up to me from the newly opened wound, but I ignored it, desperate to know what he was talking about. He turned to glare at me then, and I pulled back a bit. “I tried to talk her into pressing charges against her—for identity theft—but Addie wouldn't have any of it. Said she didn't want to see her mom go to jail. That's when I found out the extent of it—that she and 'Swami Steve' or whatever his name is hadn't just stolen Addie's social security number and used it to run up thousands in debt, they had used  _ hundreds _ of stolen numbers. Bought 'em in bulk or something from some guy in a Denny's parking lot. Which is why I really don't understand why they had to take Addie's, too. Alice knew that Addie's only chance to go to college was to get a loan—Addie's a great student, but not so great that anyone was going to offer her a full ride. Not to medical school. How the hell is she supposed to get a loan now, when her credit's been shot before she ever had a chance to use it?” He leaned his head back against the wall and sighed.

Suddenly it all started to make sense. I had arrogantly assumed that Addie had transferred out of our college prep classes to get away from me, but the real reason was that she had given up on the idea of college at all. I thought of the dry erase board back in her room, and how I had thought that it had seemed to be frozen in time. Again, I had arrogantly assumed that it had been frozen at the moment when I had asked Addie to the prom, and even after all we had been through tonight had still been slightly contemptuous of her for focusing so much on a stupid rite of teen passage. I realized now that the prom had been just as meaningless to her as it had been to me. My betrayal that night had just been the icing on the cake; the final blow. I could see now why Addie had reacted so strongly to my taking April instead of her, how after suffering such betrayal from the one person who was supposed to have her best interests at heart, being tossed over for the prom—no matter what the explanation—wouldn't sit well. But then George said something that made me go cold.

“When she left for the dance that night I almost had her talked into pressing charges. I had convinced her that they would go easy on her mom—that clearly she was acting out of her infatuation with her latest guru, because Alice didn't even know how to apply for her  _ own _ credit card, let alone steal someone else's information and do it for them. But when Addie came home she was so defeated. She didn't want to talk about her mom anymore; she just kept asking me if you had stopped by, had said anything, or left a note. I almost lied and said you had—she was so upset—but I didn't. Because you hadn't.” His voice was menacing again, and sounded even more drunken, but I barely noticed it.

I looked across the room at Addie; she was handing Zane a glass of water and some pills, and smiling at him encouragingly. My heart twisted in my chest. She had never gotten my note. Next to me, George started to snore. Of course she hadn't gotten it. It was as clear to me now as if I was still there. I remembered the towering stack of papers that had been on the kitchen table when I had handed the note to George, and how he had said, “Better clear up this mess before Addie gets home.” In my mind's eye I could see it all: George, stoned as usual, tossing the note on top of the pile. George realizing that he was late to pick Addie up from the airport . George sweeping the whole pile into the trash.

I thought back to that night, and this time viewed Addie's reactions through the lens of what I knew now. She had just lost her grandfather—the one who had always been her biggest fan, telling her that there was nothing she couldn't do. She had been betrayed by her mother, and seen her future disappear. And then, with no warning, and no explanation, had seemingly been dumped in a manner that was so humiliating, and so memorable, that nearly a year later people still teased her about it.

_ Addie's boyfriend _ .

How could she not have despised me? My mind raced, my thoughts suddenly crystal clear. The afternoon she had left—our fumbling attempt at lovemaking, both of so nervous that if I hadn't had the evidence, in the form a used condom, I wouldn't have even believed it had happened. We hadn't even taken off our clothes. And then, the next time I had seen her, my public declaration: “I'm not your boyfriend.” From Addie's perspective how could she not think that I had gotten the one thing I wanted from her and then moved on?

I moaned softly in despair. But, obviously, not nearly softly enough, because at the sound Zane's head snapped up and he stared at me.

“Who's that?” I saw his lips form the words.  _ Don't tell him _ , I thought to Addie desperately.  _ Not Zane _ . But of course she couldn't hear me.

“It's okay,” I heard her murmur, her voice so distinctive to me that I could pick it out from among the buzz of voices that filled the room. “It's only Theo. He's with me.”

Everything happened quickly then.

Zane scrambled up on the bench, trying to get as far away from me as possible, all the while screaming, “It's one of them! It was at the party—I saw it!” while pointing at me. The next thing I knew everyone was shouting at once, and there were at least a dozen guns pointed in my direction. Even so I managed to remain calm—until Addie raced over and inserted herself between the guns and me.

Seeing the guns aimed at Addie was too much for me, and a snarl ripped its way out of my throat as I pushed her behind me; as I did it the hood fell back, revealing my face. There was a moment of silence, and then a shot rang out. I heard the  _ ping _ as it hit the wall behind me and then spun off, hitting the walls of our concrete bunker two more times before coming to a halt in a rattling slide across the floor. Bill—our guide into this place—shouted out in frustration.

“God damn it, who did that? Are you trying to get us all killed?” There was a moment of sheepish silence, in which no one admitted to firing the shot. Into that silence Addie stepped forward and spoke.

“Please. I know what it looks like, but you must believe me—Theo wouldn't hurt anyone. He's sick—he needs our help.”

A woman spoke up from the corner—it was Mrs. Schneider, Shitzi's mom. “That's what I thought when my boy came home from that party—until he ripped my husband's throat out. I think whatever caused this  _ happened  _ at Theo's party, and that if he isn't as bad off as the rest of them it's because he kept the best stuff for himself.” She glared at me, her face pinched and hard. I couldn't believe it: did she really believe that all of this was caused by some recreational drug I had served at a  _ party?  _ I looked more closely at her and saw that her her short hair was matted down on one side—with blood, I realized. Probably her husband's. I also saw that she was dead serious. As were most of the people around her. They listened to her accusations and nodded to themselves. Addie spoke again, an edge of desperation in her voice.

“That's not true. It wasn't the party—it was the vaccine. Look at me—I'm not sick, am I? That's because I didn't get the shot.”

“It's not likely that  _ you _ would have been at the Frank house, Addie.” This from the parent of another one of our classmates—a quiet girl named Veronica Gillepsie.

Addie shot her a look of pure venom—again, it came painfully home to me just how much my betrayal had cost her in this small town—and pointed at Zane. “Well then, look at Zane;  _ he _ was at the party, and he isn't sick.”

All eyes whipped toward Zane, who pushed himself even further against the wall. “But I got there late—and I wasn't really even invited.”

A lie—I had invited Zane myself, and he had shown up at least a half an hour early—I remembered because Isabel had made a snide comment about it, for which I had defended him, although I, too, thought it made him seem rather pathetic. A growl escaped my throat at Zane's perfidy now.

Bad move. All eyes whipped toward me again, and the guns with them. “ _ Stop _ ,” Addie pleaded. You can see he isn't like the rest. He hasn't hurt anyone—in fact, he saved my life.” She put her hand on my arm, and several people gasped. A few of them even lowered their guns. Then Zane spoke again.

“I saw him kill Jake. He ate him while he was still alive.”

Again, Zane's lie caused an involuntary growl to slip out of my throat. Again, it was a very bad move on my part. Bill stepped forward, his gun level with my forehead. He, I was sure, would not miss.

“Step aside, Addie.” He spoke to her kindly. “We all know how you feel about Theo Frank, but it has to be done.”

“No.” Addie's voice was a whisper. She looked from face to face in the room, but no one was on our side. Behind us, George snored peacefully away on the bench. “Please Bill,” she said. “Don't do this. Just let him go. He won't hurt anyone. I promise.” The utter sincerity in her voice humbled me completely, and I made a vow then and there that if ever I survived this I would spend the rest of my life endeavoring to earn the faith that—for whatever reason—she still had in me. Unfortunately, however, the rest of my life looked like it was going to be about thirty seconds long.

“If we let him go now we'll just have to hunt him down and kill him later.” A voice from somewhere in the back spoke—I didn't look to see who it was; I didn't dare take my eyes off Bill.

“I'm sorry, Addie.” I saw Bill's finger slowly depress on the trigger.

“Then you'll have to kill me, too.” As Addie spoke she unzipped her jacket and pulled it down over her shoulder, exposing the bloody bandage I had put on earlier. “I've been bitten.”

There were more gasps, and a few murmured “Kill them both,” before Bill roared out a command. “Shut the fuck up! Everyone!” The room fell quiet. Behind us, George snorted once and then slid over onto his side. Bill closed his eyes. When he opened them they were filled with anguish. “Just go,” he finally said, his voice weary.

“No! You have to kill it!” Zane's voice was hoarse, and with my newfound clarity I could see quite clearly that he was deranged. All of my previous anger at his lies evaporated, and I could only feel pity. Until he added, “You have to kill them both.” And then it was all I could do not to leap on him and rip his throat out.

I didn't have to. In the blink of an eye Bill was across the room, cuffing Zane on the side of his head. Zane collapsed to the floor with a whimper and Bill spun back around to glare at the rest of the room. “ _ I _ say they go. And anyone who says different is going to have to go through me.” From his stance it was clear that he was serious, and everybody around him drew back from his fury. I took a chance and pulled Addie toward the door.

When we got there she turned. Bill was standing with his back to us, ready to take on the whole room. George continued to snore. “Hey Bill,” she said softly. “I thought you said you 'didn't fight no more.'”

Bill shook his head, his back still to us as he answered her. “Well, I guess it turns out that I don't fight no less, either. Now get out of here.”

“Thanks, Bill,” she said.

And then I pulled her out of the room.

 


	23. Chapter 23

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Chapter Twenty-Three: Addie

 

 

I let Theo pull me along for a little while after we left the school before I stopped him by grabbing his wrist and looking at his watch—it was still a few hours until dawn, and I hated the feeling of being exposed and helpless in the dark. We needed to find somewhere safe—but where?

Somewhere defensible, which meant somewhere not too close to other buildings so that we might have some warning if the horde came our way. Ideally, my first choice would have been Theo's house—as the highest house in town, with only one approach from below, it was perfectly suited for defense. However, from the sound of it that was where the sickness had first began, so not only might there still be zombies milling around but it was also sure to be littered with partially eaten bodies, which was something I really wasn't up for dealing with right now.

Just as I wasn't up for dealing with Zane's accusations.

Not the one about all this starting with a party drug, provided, even more ludicrously, by Theo—I  _ knew  _ it had been the vaccine. Rather, it was his accusation that he had seen Theo kill—and eat—someone.  _ That  _ was the accusation that I wasn't ready to confront.

It didn't matter. Even if Theo had done it it hadn't been his fault—it was the fault of the vaccine. But  _ had  _ he?  _ It doesn't matter _ I told myself firmly. And then I concentrated on the problem of finding us a place to hide. Theo tugged at me, pulling me to keep moving. “Wait, Theo,” I said. “We need to figure out where we're going. It has to be someplace defensible, and fairly isolated, and hopefully zombie-free, and—” he stopped me by placing his fingers on my lips. Although I knew his purpose in doing it was only to silence me his touch was so gentle and intimate that it was hard not to respond by putting one of my fingers on his lips in return. When I was quiet he pointed off to the north, and then gestured up. 

“Do you have an idea?” I asked.

He nodded, and then kissed the spot on my lips where his fingers had been, softly, fleetingly, like the brush of butterfly wings. It took my breath away and I could only respond with a tiny “Okay.” He took my wrist in his crabbed hand and pulled, and we set off at a brisk trot. Theo stopped every now and then to cock his head to the side and listen before moving again, but obviously he never heard anything because within twenty minutes we were at our destination. I turned to him and smiled.

“Theo, you are brilliant.” I was panting slightly from our run and had to pause before I spoke again. “But how are we going to get in?”

We were at the back of a restored Victorian mansion perched high on the side of a hill. Back when the mines were still open it had been the foreman's house, but when they had finally closed for good sometime in the late 50s it had been abandoned, like a lot of the houses in Solanan. It had eventually been restored during Solanan's rebirth as a resort community, and then last fall some ancient British pop star from the sixties had bought the whole thing. I had never heard of him but my Dad apparently had, because upon hearing his name his eyes had goggled a bit before he snorted and said, “Is he still alive?”

I had laughed then, and said, “Well, obviously.” Now, however, the question didn't seem quite so amusing. I tried to picture the old rocker as a zombie and decided that there wouldn't be much difference. I giggled a little at that, and Theo looked at me, concerned. I waved my hand in front of my face, trying to convey, “Forget it.” Theo's eyes, I noticed, zipped back and forth, following the pattern my hand was creating in the air. It looked uncomfortable. And predatory. I put my hand back down, all thoughts of humor vanquished. Theo stared at the place my hand had been for a moment longer before he took it and led me up a set of stairs that ended at a second story deck. It seemed as if he knew right where he was going.

Of course he did; he had probably been here before. After all, Theo's dad was a known schmoozer, always trying to do a deal. Like the huge contract I had heard he had signed with with Hawkins and Black, one of the country's most successful PR firms, right after Theo had taken April Black to the prom. At that thought I couldn't help myself—I knew it was petty, but still I snatched my hand back out of Theo's grasp.

He didn't try and take it back, but then again he was rather occupied: pausing outside a heavy door he pressed his ear up to it for a moment before he quickly put his shoulder to it and shoved—with a small grunt of effort he pushed it open and then paused to listen again before reaching to pull me inside.

Still thinking about Theo and April at the prom I folded my arms over my chest and brushed past him, determinedly looking away. My eyes fell on the splintered door jamb and I stopped, amazed at how Theo had broken it as if it had been balsa wood. I reached out to feel it, just to check—it was solid oak. Theo put his hands around my waist and pulled me inside before he pushed the door shut; it didn't close perfectly anymore, but it would have to do. He let me go to dart over to a massive armoire in the corner and push it in the direction of the broken door.

“Here, let me help,” I said, but it was done before I could move. Which was probably for the best, as the way I was feeling I probably wouldn't have been able to push an Ikea dresser, let alone the antique monstrosity that Theo had just moved effortlessly. He must have heard as much in my voice because he was quickly back at my side. His glance went from my shoulder to my eyes with alarm, and I knew that he was worried about the effects of the bite.

“It's okay,” I said. “It won't affect me. I heard some of the soldiers talking—something about 'first gen' and 'second gen' bites. I'm just a little tired, that's all.”

That was an understatement. I was exhausted, dead on my feet. This had been, without a doubt, the longest day of my entire life. Theo looked at a grandfather clock in the corner; I followed his gaze but it was too dark to see the time. Obviously, though, Theo could see it just fine, and what he saw upset him. Without warning he began to pace around the room, his movements jerky and quick.

“Theo, what is it?” I said. He stopped and looked around the room, clearly searching for something. I saw his eyes alight on the enormous bed that sat on a platform in the middle of the room and then slide away from it. He growled softly. I looked at the bed, too, and then up at Theo. I felt like growling, too.

Instead I walked over to a small writing desk set up to take in what, in the daytime, must be a magnificent view. The desk was bare except for a laptop, a cup of pencils, and a day-by-day calendar, the kind where you pull off each day as it passes. The date on it was February 10—obviously the rock star hadn't been here for some time. I looked at it more closely: the theme was “365 Things to Do Before You're Dead,” and the subject for the day was “Ride an Elephant.” There was a picture of a Western couple posing on top of a weary looking elephant with some Eastern temple in the background.

“Hey,” I said, trying to think about something—anything—besides the giant bed behind us, “Do you think elephants have calendars like this? And if they do, do they have a page that says “Spend just one day without some asshole on your back?” I ripped the page off to show Theo what I was talking about. Quicker than I could blink he was at my side, snatching the sheet from my hand and flipping it over before he grabbed a pencil. Or at least tried to—his crabbed hand knocked over the pencil cup, scattering them across the desk. He snarled and swatted at the pencils spilled out across the desk in frustration. I had never seen Theo so upset before.

“Here, let me help you,” I said. I picked up a pencil and tried to fit it into his hand but his fingers couldn't close enough to grip it and it slipped through his hand and landed on the floor. He moaned then, an eerie, mournful sound. I put my hand on his shoulder, all of my pique about April Black and the Prom forgotten again. “Theo, it's okay. Don't worry about it.” He stared at my hand for a moment and then grabbed my wrist and pulled me over to the laptop. It came to life briefly, and then the low battery /sleep mode warning flashed on the screen and it turned itself off again. Theo punched at the keyboard anyway.

“Theo, it doesn't work.” He snarled and reached a hand up to my face, almost, but not quite, touching my eye then putting his hand back to the keyboard. He did that twice more before I had a flash of intuition and understood what he was trying to do. “Oh. You want me to look at the letters you touch.”

He nodded his head vigorously and began to touch the keyboard again. I watched him as closely as I could. Unfortunately the condition of his hands and the state of my exhaustion meant that the eureka moment I'd experienced when I'd figured out what he was doing was going to be the only one I got for a while. I tried to pick the right letters out from the two or three his curled fingers would land on, but it was no use. I couldn't do it. Finally, after a few minutes of me making guesses (“W? Q? A? I'm sorry Theo, I just don't know which one you're pointing to,”), and Theo's frustrated growls in response, I stopped him.

“Theo,” I said. “This isn't working. I'm sorry. I'm just too tired to figure it out.”

Theo looked at me closely and then closed his eyes and nodded. He looked so defeated that I couldn't stop myself from reaching out and placing my hand on the side of his face. He placed his own hand over mine, stiff fingers cupping mine lightly. He then opened his eyes, nodded once, and before I realized what he was about, picked me up and carried me over to the bed. My heart stopped beating entirely as he reached down with one hand and hooked his fingers under the covers, pulling them down with a jerk. He then set me in the bed and took two deliberate steps back.

Oh.

Theo wanted me to sleep. Alone. When I didn't lay down immediately he mimed putting his head on a pillow with his hands. “Yeah, I get it,” I said. “Bed. Sleep. But what about you?”

He took another step away from me, toward the windows, and put his hand up to his forehead, miming someone looking off in the distance. He would keep a lookout. I considered arguing but the truth was the bed felt wonderful; it was almost as if the pillows and blankets were reaching up to me and pulling me down into their warm embrace. “Okay,” I said, giving in. “But wake me before dawn—we need to make a plan.” He nodded and turned back to face the windows. I unzipped my jacket—the one sleeve was now hard with my dried blood—and slipped it off, putting it on the floor. I then lay down and pulled the covers up and over me, sinking down in surrender. I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.

 

 

When I awoke it was still dark, although I could see Theo's silhouette against the starlight coming through the windows. I was blindsided by how happy I was just to see him there—happy not only because he hadn't left me, but happy that we were in this position at all. Happy that all of this had happened, so that, if nothing else, Theo and I were friends again. Or were we?

I remembered, yet again, the conversation I had overheard—the one about how the vaccine drove some to “procreate.” That would certainly explain many of Theo's actions—especially the more amorous ones. I thought of the way he had ground his hips into mine back at my locker and felt my toes curl with the memory. Surreptitiously I examined his profile from under my lashes as he stared out the window: his black hair in spiky disarray; the sharp angle of his jaw; the full, sensuous curve of his lips, the bottom one slightly fuller.  _ God, I always loved his bottom lip _ . Even after the memory of our only attempt at lovemaking had taken on bitter, disastrous overtones, I still found myself thinking of what it had been like to finally, after years of wanting, gently pull that lip between my teeth and run the tip of my tongue along it, as well as what it had done to me to hear him moan in surprised response.

In retrospect I think that I had shocked him. I think that he had been expecting me to stop him at some point—after all, my father had been just outside the window, cursing and grumbling at our old truck. And I probably should have stopped him. But I had wanted him just as badly as he had wanted me. Thinking back, though, to the way we had both avoided each other's eyes as I had pulled my pants back on—Theo hadn't even taken his off, and we were both still wearing our shirts—it was obvious now that we were anything but ready for that step. It was awkward, and uncomfortable, and it made the scene at the prom that much harder to bear, because afterwards I had had absolutely no one to talk to about it. That was what had really broken my heart: not losing a lover (if three minutes on top of the covers counted), or a boyfriend, but rather, losing my best friend.

In retrospect it had  _ so _ not been worth it. Which is why it made no sense at all when I slid out from underneath the covers and went over to Theo, slipping my arms around him from the back.

I had only meant to hug him but he was so warm that I found myself slipping my hands underneath his t-shirt and running them along the flat planes of his stomach. He growled, low in his throat, and turned around slowly. My hands slid along his sides and I caught the bottom of his shirt underneath my thumbs and lifted it up until he obligingly raised his arms over his head and allowed me to pull it over his head.

The movement caused my shoulder to cry out in protest but I didn't care. I ran my hands up his arms to his shoulders, and pulling myself up onto my toes pressed my lips to the spot where his jaw met his ear. I softly closed my teeth on his skin and then whispered his name.

He threw back his head, and my lips closed on his throat. Then his hands, which had been resting lightly on my hips, were on my face, my neck, and finally, the front of my bra. There was a loud ripping sound and then my bra was lying in two pieces on the ground, my bare breasts pressed up against his chest.

We both growled then, and Theo brought his lips down to mine for a kiss that bordered on brutal. I kissed him back the same way. I knew that he was only doing this because of the vaccine, but I didn't care. I didn't care that he didn't want  _ me _ , that he just wanted. For all I knew the world—or at least  _ my _ world—was ending tonight. For now, though, I had Theo in my arms, and that was all that mattered.

I slid my palms slowly down his chest until they rested on his stomach, and then I slid them down further and unbuttoned the fly on his jeans before I undid my own. This time, he was the one who didn't stop me as I did everything that his crippled hands couldn't do. I was even the one who put the condom on, after Theo had found it by rummaging around in the nightstand drawer.

Afterwards the only guilt I felt was for Theo. “I'm sorry, Theo,” I said, stroking his hair as his head lay on my chest. “I know you couldn't help it. The problem is, I couldn't help it either.” A small bead of sweat ran off the tip of his nose and landed on my collarbone, and I shivered. That was when I noticed that Theo was no longer burning up; although his body temperature was still above normal, it was much closer to mine. “Theo?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

He looked up at me, and I gasped: his eyes were back to normal. God, I had forgotten how beautiful Theo's eyes were, almost lilac-colored. “Addie?” he said, and his voice was also better than I had remembered, deeper and even more melodious. And then he convulsed.

“Theo!” I cried as I slid out from underneath him, watching in horror as his eyes rolled back in his head and his body shook so violently that the bed rattled. When the seizure stopped he curled into a fetal position, shivering violently. I reached down to the foot of the bed and grabbed the thick down duvet we had kicked off earlier and wrapped it around him as best I could, watching as the shivering abated a bit. Reaching his hand out from underneath it he grabbed my wrist and then slid his fingers down to squeeze my own. His hand was no longer curled and useless.

“Your hand,” I said. “And your eyes. Theo, I think it might be working.”

“A-A-A-ddie-e-e-.” His teeth were chattering so hard I was afraid he was going to bite off his tongue.

“Shh,” I said. “It's okay. I'm here. I won't leave you.” I put my hands on either side of his face.

“N-n-o.” He shook his head, dislodging my hands.

He didn't want me here? Or he just didn't want me?

“S-s-schoo-ool. Go.”

“You want me to leave?” I sat up, painfully aware of the fact that I was naked. I folded my arms across my chest protectively.

He nodded his head violently.

“Okay,” I said, my voice small and hurt. “I'll go. If you want me to. Just let me wait until it's light.”

He threw his head back and groaned, clearly frustrated. “N-no! Now.”

My hurt turned to anger. Okay, so he clearly regretted what had just happened. So he wanted me to leave. That didn't mean he got to kick me out in the dark in a town that, for all we knew, was still overrun with zombies. I glared at him, my eyes blazing. “Can I at least get dressed first?”

“A-A-Addie.” His voice was a plea. But a plea for what? I was thoroughly confused. I was even more confused when he reached out his hand for me. After a moment's hesitation I took it and he pulled me to his side. “The-there's . . . b-b-omb.” He gritted his teeth together, and continued. “I-in school. G-get them ou-out. S-s-seven.”

A bomb? In the school? Suddenly Theo's frustration with the paper and the keyboard all made sense—he had been trying to tell me about a bomb planted in the school.

I didn't question how he knew: obviously Dr. Jonas, in typical evil scientist fashion, had felt free to let slip some of her nefarious plan. I tried to slide off of the bed but Theo wouldn't let go of my hand. “Theo, let me go,” I said. “I have to get dressed.” He held my hand tighter and I leaned over him. “Is there something else?” I asked.

He tried to speak, but this time the shaking was even worse and he actually began to bite his own tongue. Blood slipped out of the corner of his mouth. “Shh,” I said, concerned. “It's okay. I got it.” He shook his head then and released my hand as another wave of violent shivering overcame him. I quickly found my pants and then looked around for a shirt before I remembered that I didn't have one and grabbed Theo's. As I pulled it over my head I felt the wound in my shoulder twinge in protest, but then the wonderful smell of Theo washed over me and the pain disappeared.

On the bed Theo trembled beneath the thick covers—opening up a trunk at the foot of bed I pulled out another two blankets. I was putting them on top of Theo when he tried to speak again. “A-A-Addie,” he said, his teeth clicking together like castanets, “I-I-I-”

“Shh,” I told him. “It's okay. I know.” And it was true: I did know. I had seen the regret in his eyes when he had first opened them and known instantly that with the return of his humanity had come the regret for what had just happened. Despite what he had done before I knew in my heart that Theo was not cruel—he didn't want to hurt me. And he hadn't. This time I had gone into it with my eyes wide open, knowing full well what I would be getting—and what I wouldn't. I leaned over him now and tucked the blankets more securely around his shivering shoulders. “Thank you, Theo,” I said. Then I kissed him on the forehead and slipped down the stairs to the kitchen, where I left through the a side door that led out onto a large, wrap-around porch.

I heard the door lock behind me, the small “click” of the bolt sounding unnaturally loud in the darkness. I took a deep breath, and turned to go down the steps. Suddenly there was a creaking noise at the other end of the porch, and something moved. I stopped, frozen in place, as something large and human-sized came toward me out of the darkness.

 


	24. Chapter 24

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Chapter Twenty-Four: Theo

 

 

I watched Addie go. I tried to control my chattering teeth enough to speak to her one more time but all I managed to do was bite down on my own tongue hard enough to make it bleed. Still, she had said she had known. Had she really? Had she known how happy I was that, no matter what the circumstances, she was back in my life? Had she known how sorry I was for what I had done to her the year before, for how very deeply I had hurt her, for how very selfish and wrong I had been? Had she known how much I loved her?

My heart started to hammer in my chest and I found myself reaching up to clutch at it, trying to squeeze the pain away. I took low, shallow breaths, each one an agony, and wondered if I was having a heart attack. If I was dying. If so then I felt glad that the last memory I would have would be of Addie.

I closed my eyes and remembered the way her her tawny eyes had looked as she gazed up into mine, the wonder and the pleasure in them before they had swept closed, her long, dark lashes sweeping down at the same moment the corners of her lips had swept up into a smile. I had pressed my face into the tangled mass of her hair that lay twisted on the pillow beneath her head, unable to hold back any longer as she had whispered my name into my ear and ran her soft, cool fingers down my spine. I would have given anything at that moment to have been able to tell her how much I loved her.

But instead, the pain had begun. At first it had been a relief to finally feel something after hours of terrifying numbness, but then the pain overtook everything else. Everything, that is, except for Addie.

As much as I longed to tell her that I loved her I knew I might not be able to fight against the pain long enough to say any more, and so I had told her about the bombs. And I had been right—she had misunderstood me enough that I had barely been able to get my point across. Although, once I had said the actual word, “bomb,” she had moved quickly enough.

But would she move quickly enough now to get back to the school and warn everybody in time? More importantly, would they believe her? I remembered how her father had scoffed at her attempts to tell him that Dr. Jonas was behind all of this—what if he still wouldn't believe her, and she was in there arguing with him when the bombs went off?

I had to get down there.

I tried to push the blankets she had piled on top of me off but it felt like they were made out of lead. Why in the world would anyone have lead blankets? I lay there, heaving at them in frustration for a moment before I saw one slide off and land on the floor in a fluttering motion. That's when I realized that it wasn't the blankets that were heavy, it was me that was weak. No, worse than weak—immobilized. I tried to squeeze my fists and realized I couldn't. Nor could I move my feet. With a start I realized that the same paralysis I had felt before was returning.

Had the antiviral been a trick? Maybe what Ramirez had given me had just been a stronger form of the vaccine, and when I woke up this time there would be no fighting the effect. I would become one of them. I wouldn't know anything except the desire to feed.

No. I refused to let that happen. With great effort I wrenched myself up into a sitting position. I heard the cascading notes of a canyon wren right outside the window, and turned, surprised to see that the sky was beginning to lighten. I turned to look at the grandfather clock across the room but even though the room was lighter now I could no longer make out the hands. When I turned to look back out of the window again the movement of my head was enough to send me sliding off the bed and onto the floor, but I never felt myself hit the polished wood. Instead all I could focus on was the pounding of my heart, beating slower and slower with each breath. The edges of my vision began to darken, as if I was looking through a tunnel that was slowly collapsing all around me. Just before it collapsed completely I saw a flash of light that lit up the room, followed a second later by the rumble of an enormous explosion.

First the room went dark again, and then my vision followed.  _ But it can't be seven yet _ , was my first thought.  _ Jonas said the bombs would go off at seven _ . My next thought was: _ Oh no—Addie _ .

And then my heart stopped, and for the second time in one night, I died

 


	25. Chapter 25

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Addie

 

 

 

I reached into my pocket for the gun. I was an idiot; I should have had it in my hand as soon as I stepped outside. As I fumbled the creature came forward and I was filled with the irrational urge to say, “Can't you just wait one minute?” And then I saw who it was: Ramirez, the soldier from the hotel. The one who had helped us. Had he followed us? Had the whole thing been some kind of a set up?

“What do you want?” I said, my hand finally finding the gun in my pocket. I slipped it into my hand, my finger on the trigger, the barrel pressed up against the fleece of my jacket pocket.

“Don't shoot,” he said, his hands up, palms facing out. “I want to help.”

“How did you find us?” I asked.

He smiled grimly. “I'm a tracker. That's what I do—or rather, what I did. What I was recruited for—tracking the survivors down.”

“And after you've tracked them?” My finger stroked the trigger.

He turned his hands so that his palms faced the sky, and shrugged. “Don't know. You're my first. And my last: I'm unemployed.”

I took my finger off the trigger. “Unemployed?”

“I quit.”

“Jonas let you quit?”

Again, the grim smile. “She had better. But that's not what I'm here for—I tracked you down because I wanted to warn you—and Theo—to get out of here. Leave now. Jonas will never stop until she finds Theo and gets a look inside his brain.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she's never seen anything like him.”

“No—why are you helping us?”

He paused, and then spoke softly. “Because you—both of you—reminded me of something that I had forgotten.”

“What was that?” I asked, curious despite my suspicion.

“That they—the zeds—are still human.” He smiled crookedly then, and I realized that he was much younger than I had originally thought—in fact, he probably wasn't that much older than me. “And also,” he added then, still smiling, “that I'm still human, too.”

And for some reason, I believed him. I took my hand out of my pocket and brushed it across my face. “I don't think I can move Theo—not now. I gave him the antiviral, and he's not reacting well. He's . . . sick.”

Ramirez looked at me sharply. “Did he bite you?”

“No!” I thought of Theo's mouth at my neck, my ears, my lips—and blushed, before I said more empathetically, “No.”

He whistled low under his breath and then said, “Really?  _ Wow _ .”

I blushed even harder. “Look, thanks for the warning—and for your help before. I really appreciate it. But I've got to go—I have something to take care of at the school.”

“You know about the bombs?”

“Yes. So—”

He cut me off. “How?”

“Theo told me.”

“He  _ told  _ you? He spoke?”

“Yes—briefly. Before he got too sick again.”

“And before you and he . . . “

This time my blush was almost volcanic. “No. It was after.”

He looked at me, and then shook his head and smiled. “Definitely still human. Good luck.” And then he was gone.

 

 

I made it down to the school in record time—one of the benefits of running downhill. “Don't shoot, Bill!” I shouted as I skittered down the steps to the basement. Bill stepped out of the shadows in front of me. Before he could say anything my dad came bursting out of the room behind him. He looked like hell.

“Addie!” He snatched me up into his arms and crushed me to him. My shoulder screamed in agony; I must have made some sound of protest, because he quickly let me go, saying, “Sorry—it's your shoulder, right? Is it true? Have you been bitten?”

I gasped for breath, clutching at a stitch in my side, and said, “Yes. But that's not important—I'm fine. We need to get everyone out of here, though—this whole place is going to blow up any minute.”

Several people had followed my dad out into the hall; they all started talking at once when they heard my words. My dad looked at me for a moment in concern before he said, “What do you mean, Addie?”

“What do I mean? How many ways are there for things to blow up? I mean that there are bombs planted throughout this building, and they're set to go off at seven—which is like  _ now _ . We have to get out of here.” I took his arm and started to pull.

He resisted. “Why would there be bombs in the building?”

“ _ Because _ ,” I said, exasperated beyond belief, “Dr. Jonas planted them here.”

Now he looked downright skeptical. “Dr. Jonas? She's the woman who was here with the soldiers, right? Why would she do that? All of our scouting parties say that the soldiers are helping to clear the town; in fact, they even made contact with us, and told us to stay put here, where it's safe. Why would they do that if there were bombs in the building?”

My dad. For all of his gruffness and his rough exterior it was the hardest thing in the world to convince him that somebody might not be telling him the truth. That some people really were evil. Until he had concrete proof to the contrary he would never believe that Dr. Jonas and her gang were here to do anything but help. Just like he had never believed that the man my mom had lived with for three months in California while she had taken care of my grandfather had been trying to do anything but help her to heal—right up until the point where “Swami Steve” had put the moves on me and then stolen my identity. I wanted to be able to calmly and rationally point all that out to him; I wanted to be able to lay my arguments out one by one, until, through the sheer weight of my superior evidence, I convinced my dad—and everyone else—that we had to get out of here. Now.

Theo would have been able to do it. Theo always stayed calm. Unfortunately, I wasn't Theo, and I lost my temper. “You  _ never _ believe me!”

I wanted to slap my hand over my mouth. Of all the times to sound like a whiny teenager. My dad put his arm around me, clearly trying to comfort his hysterical daughter. In the doorway I could hear people murmuring. I caught my name, and the words “bitten” and “trick.” Well, at least they didn't think I was hysterical—they thought I was trying to trick them into going outside. That was what I  _ should _ have done—tried to trick them. After all, I really didn't need for them to believe  _ why _ they were going outside—I just needed them to go. I should have told them that Dr. Jonas was waiting outside with balloons and lollipops for them all—they would have believed  _ that _ .

Suddenly I understood how Theo had felt: I wanted to growl in frustration. I looked around, desperately searching for some way to convince them to leave the building. My gaze landed on a bag of sawdust-like material off in one corner. I recognized it as the stuff they always brought out to soak up vomit anytime anyone—usually Upchuckie—puked. From that my thoughts flashed to the scene of his latest explosion in the cafeteria, when Theo tricked him into eating the grease cake. Of  _ course _ . The  _ cake _ . 

As my dad pulled me toward the door it was easy enough to break free of his grip and run forward—he expected me to run in the other direction. And the people in the doorway were only too eager to scatter as they saw me coming; after all, I had been bitten hadn't I? I was able to push through them and into the room before anyone tried to stop me, and once inside I ran straight for the lantern set against the back wall—I had noticed it earlier, and its distinctive oily smell. Unlike the other lanterns set around the room that were run on canisters of white gas, this was an old-fashioned kerosene lamp. The dangerous kind. The kind that burned.

I picked it up now with both hands, barely feeling the hot glass of the chimney burning my hands as I spun and threw it at the wall with all my might. It shattered, spilling burning kerosene over the sawdust, and in seconds the room was filled with thick black smoke. I stumbled backwards, choking and coughing, and turned to find my dad staring at me in horror as people all around us screamed and shouted. “Can we go now?” I said to him, surprisingly calm.

“Addie, what have you done?” he said, before he grabbed my arm—the one with the sore shoulder, my brain took note of—and pulled me out of the room and up the stairs. By the time we got to the school entrance the halls were all thick with smoke, and as we stumbled out of the front doors it only seemed to get thicker, causing us to retreat all the way to the parking lot.

Where Dr. Jonas was waiting with at least twenty members of her security team.

She and I stared at each other for a long moment. Then, behind me, there was a series of explosions, and we all ducked as glass and other debris rained down on us like malevolent rain. The force of the concussion caused us all to stagger, and then it was over. My dad turned to me, his eyes chagrined.

“Addie,” he started to say, but Dr. Jonas cut him off.

“Thank God you all got out of there,” she said. “I was afraid we wouldn't be in time.” She turned to the man standing beside her, who I now saw was the same man I had seen earlier—the one who had been bitten on the face. “Mr. Mankiewics, please restrain this girl.”

Of course. There had to be a scapegoat. There always had to be a scapegoat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my dad start forward, comprehension lighting his face. I turned to him and spoke quickly, under my breath. There was nothing he could do for me—not now. But he could still help Theo. As I heard Mankiewics coming up behind me I told my dad where Theo was hidden. “Take care of him,” I hissed. “But don't tell them where he is.”

He seemed to understand, saying nothing when Mankiewics came and grabbed me by the arms. He almost stepped forward when he put the zip tie on my hands, twisting them around behind my back so tightly that I felt the wound on my shoulder break open and start to bleed again, but I shook my head at him fiercely and he stepped back. Bill, however, felt no such compunction.

“What the hell's going on here?” he said, stopping to put his hands on his knees and cough.

Dr. Jonas looked at him with what appeared to be compassion. “We're not quite sure ourselves. As near as we can figure it, this girl,”—here she motioned at me—“conspired with another boy to destroy the school. They somehow managed to administer a powerful hallucinogenic to the majority of the students. We think they may have done it through the school drinking fountains.”

“No, they didn't.” Zane stepped forward and Dr. Jonas narrowed her eyes at him, clearly remembering him as the  _ other _ student who had refused the “vaccination.” She cut her eyes to the side and motioned with her chin; two more men stepped forward, but Zane was oblivious as he continued to speak. “It wasn't at school—it was at the party. Theo's party. I saw them do it. And then they were both here together earlier. They tried to attack me.”

I stared at him in disbelief, stunned not by what he was saying, but by how sincere he was; he believed every word of it. Dr. Jonas smiled at him.

“Of course—that must have been it.”

Zane preened under her approval. “But what about Theo?” he asked.

“Theo?” she asked.

“The boy you were talking about,” Zane said, suddenly sounding less sure of himself.

“Ah yes, of course.  _ Theo _ .” Jonas sounded like she was savoring the name on her tongue—enjoying, no doubt, knowing that she could now find Theo easily. “Don't worry—we'll find him. We've already rounded up all of the rest of their victims—we're treating them back at the hotel.”

I stared at her in disbelief—how did anybody learn to lie so smoothly? And then I looked at her closer—at her satisfied smugness, her air of concern—and I realized that she didn't think that she was lying. In her eyes Theo and and I  _ were _ the ones who were trying to ruin everything, and she really was just trying to help.

There was a buzz of voices as various people asked about the whereabouts of their children. Dr. Jonas held up a hand to stop them,and they quieted instantly, quelled by her calm authority. I wondered how many times she had made this same speech.

“Please. I don't have the time to answer all of your questions right now. Let us just help your children. My men are also trying to reestablish contact with the outside world—as soon as we do that, and get some more medical help here, we'll be able to reunite you with the survivors. Until then I must ask that you return to your homes and wait there for further instructions. Is that understood?”

I saw nods and heard murmurs of agreement, and was struck by how quickly everyone responded to the presence of a leader. People really did just want to be told what to do.

Or at least,  _ most _ people did. Bill was through with his coughing fit, and stepped forward again.

“Addie and Theo? Plotting all this? That sounds like grade A, number one,  _ bullshit _ to me.” 

Dr. Jonas made a small motion with her hand, and two more security agents—a man and a woman this time—stepped forward, their faces hard. Just then my dad cleared his throat and stepped forward as well. “No, Bill, it's the truth.” The way everyone whipped their heads around to stare at my dad—including Jonas—was almost comical. I ducked my eyes and looked at the ground: I could never keep a straight face when he was telling one of his outrageous stories. He had the same tone to his voice now as he did when he was telling the story about how he once overtook a bear while riding his bike—uphill. Or how he once put skis on a Lazy Boy and rode it halfway down a Black Diamond run. This time, however, the story was about me.

“I'm not saying it was her idea, but I think that Addie is definitely involved. I think she did it for Theo. You know she would do anything for him.”

Bill looked at him shrewdly—he and my dad had known each other for years, long before my dad met my mother, even, and if he knew anything it was how to follow my dad's lead. Hadn't I heard often enough the story about how he and my dad had gotten out of skipping out on a bar tab by telling the arresting officer that the only reason they'd run out the back door was because they had seen an  _ alien  _ come in the front? That had been a story my dad had made up on the spot, and Bill, catching on immediately to what he was trying to do, had gone along with the story whole hog. He had even tossed in his own little details about how he was “tired of getting probed all the time.” 

Now he followed along as well, nodding to himself and saying, “Sure, sure: remember when she made up that story about Theo asking her to the prom?”

My head snapped up at that—did he have to be  _ quite _ so convincing? I saw Dr. Jonas smile.

“Would you like to come along?” she asked my dad, her voice laced with false compassion.

_ No!  _ I wanted to scream.  _ You stay away from him. _ What I said, though, was, “I don't need my  _ daddy _ to deal with you.” And then I glared at her. She just smiled at me in return. It looked like a death's head mask.

“Yes,” my dad said, blanching slightly at the sight. “I think I will.” And then he staggered, as if it had all just been too much for him. Bill reached out and grabbed his elbow.

“Easy there, George. Do you want me to come along, too?”

“Actually—” Dr. Jonas started to speak, but my dad cut her off as if he hadn't heard her. “That would be great, Bill. My heart, you know.” Bill coughed again, this time, I was pretty sure, in order to cover up a laugh.  _ My heart, my ass  _ I thought to myself. 

“Fine,” Dr. Jonas said from between clenched teeth. And then she seemed to remember the part she was playing, and smiled again. “Wonderful,” she added. “Please, come this way.” She gestured at me with her chin and another man stepped forward to grab my other arm. It was the man I had first seen back at Enrico's—Webb. I remembered what I had heard him saying to Ramirez, and I shivered. I hoped that I was all the way dead before he got his chance at me.

We turned and began to walk toward the hotel. Four of the security agents accompanied us; there were the two that were holding my arms, and two more who walked behind my dad and Bill. The rest of them stayed behind, presumably to help out with the fire, although the explosions had pretty much put the fire out on their own.  _ Probably designed that way  _ I thought. Behind us I could hear people asking questions. I heard them saying my name, and then Theo's. I wanted to turn around and scream at them, tell them to use their brains—did this really look like it could have been the work of two high school students? But the truth was I was to exhausted to say—or do—anything. I had no idea what Jonas' evil plot for me entailed, but as long as it included sitting—or better yet,  _ lying— _ down, I didn't see myself putting up too much resistance.

I stumbled along with my head down, Webb and Mankiewics holding tightly to my arms on either side. Clearly they were under strict orders not to lose me, judging from the way their fingers dug into my arms. Except for the pain it caused my shoulder, I didn't really mind—at least it kept me upright.

When we got to the hotel Dr. Jonas turned to my father and said, “If you don't mind I'd like to speak to your daughter alone. It's vital that we find out where this boy is.”

I braced myself for my dad's explosion and was stunned when he simply shrugged and said, “That's fine by me. She's eighteen now. Actually, I just came along because I was hoping the bar would be open.” He spoke directly into Dr. Jonas's face, and I noticed that he said “open” with an aspirated “h,” so that it came out like “ _ hopen _ .” 

Dr. Jonas wrinkled her nose at the smell of stale whiskey on his breath and said, “Fine. Bar's that way.” She indicated a room off of the lobby with her chin.

“Much obliged,” my dad said as he and Bill made his way over to the bar. He stopped at the door and turned, a stern expression on his face. It was so ludicrous—and I was so tired—that I had to stifle a giggle. “Addie,” he said, his tone matching his looks, “Make sure you tell the doctor everything. Tell her exactly where Theo lives. Don't make me come  _ up _ there.”

Dr. Jonas was watching him, a speculative look on her face. Whatever she was, it wasn't stupid: if my dad wasn't careful he would overplay his hand. Knowing that, I didn't dare risk anything more than a quick look at the floor beneath our feet. Hopefully, that would be enough to give him the information he was fishing for—whether they were taking me up or down.

She watched my dad and Bill go into the bar and then turned to the two agents who weren't holding onto my arms and said, “Stay here. Don't let them out of you sight. And be prepared—I may need you to bring them to me.”

“No,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“So,” she said, turning on me with a triumphant smile, “you  _ do  _ care what happens to them? Excellent.”

I kicked myself for letting my feelings show.

Dr. Jonas turned to Mankiewics and Webb. “Come with me; we'll take her to the dive pool.” Mankiewics's grip on my arm tightened, and I glanced quickly up at him quickly. The only change on his face was a slight flaring of his nostrils and widening of his eyes, but it was enough to tell me that he didn't want to go to the dive pool. And any place one of these guys didn't want to go, I sure as hell didn't want to go to either. I slowed my steps, trying to give myself time to think, but it didn't matter: with a man on each arm I could have stopped walking entirely and still would have been propelled along at whatever pace they chose.

My mind raced as I tried to figure out what they had in store for me. Were they going to threaten me with drowning? Water-boarding? No, not that—water-boarding only took a little bit of water, and the Chalet's dive pool was enormous. And unique. It was the highest diving facility in the Southwest—people came here from all over to get their certificate in high-altitude diving, the kind you needed if you were going to dive lakes and caves above a certain elevation.

We got off of the elevator, but instead of turning right, towards Dr. Jonas's exam room, (and my escape route), we turned left, toward the dive pool. Our pace slowed, but this time it wasn't me slowing us down—it was the men on either side of me. Soon Dr. Jonas was several feet ahead of us; by the time she got to the double doors labeled “High Altitude Dive Center,” she was almost ten feet out in front of us. She looked over her shoulder then and snapped at the men holding me. “ _ Do _ keep up, will you?”

“Yes Ma'am,” they both said in unison.

Then she opened up the doors, and I understood why they had hung back. I wanted to do more than hang back—I wanted to turn around and run.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. One fall someone had given my parents an elk leg that they had tried to keep fresh by putting in an ice chest near the front door. Of course it hadn't fit at all. Three days later they had finally given up, the smell being so bad that it was keeping all of us up at night. The smell that came out of the dive pool was like that smell—only multiplied by about a hundred.

As was the sound. While the elk leg had attracted its fair share of flies the dive pool had so many of them that at first I thought there must be a bee hive nearby. I quickly realized, though, that these insects were not after nectar—they were after blood.

And meat.

Because that's what the dive pool was filled with: meat. Living meat.

And the meat was hungry.

As if they were all controlled by the same switch, suddenly every head turned toward us, and their snarls and growls soon drowned out the sound of the flies buzzing around their blood-stained lips.

I took an involuntary step backward, but Mankiewics and Webb held me tight. “You lied,” I said to Dr. Jonas. “You lied about  _ everything _ .”

She shot me a bemused look. “Actually, I didn't. These are the second generation infected. They are incurable. The first gens—your classmates—are all upstairs receiving the antiviral. The ones who survive the treatment will be released to their parents, just as I promised.”

I looked at her sharply. “What do you mean 'the ones who survive the treatment'?”

She smiled at me—or at least, that's what I think she intended. The grimace that lit her features could hardly be classified as a smile in anyone's book. “So—you  _ did _ use that antiviral you stole from me.”

I remained silent. She tilted her head to one side and looked at me closer, as if she were reading my mind. When she next spoke, it was as if she had.

“So you administered the shot, but it was done recently enough that you weren't there to witness the reaction. Interesting. Why, I wonder, did you wait?” Again, she examined me closely. “Of course—you waited because you didn't know whether or not you could trust it—you waited until you felt you had no choice. I would have done the same thing.” The smile that lit up her face was almost genuine this time. “We're really quite alike, you and I.”

“We're  _ nothing _ alike,” I spat out.

My anger didn't distress her—if anything, it seemed to confirm her assessment. “We are, though—we're both cynics and skeptics at heart. I should have seen that from the beginning, when you had the audacity to question my “Super Vaccine.” And then, later, when I learned that there was a member of the control group actually  _ cooperating _ with the volunteers—”

“ _ Volunteers? _ Is that what you call them?”

She ignored my interruption. “Well, I should have known that only a fellow skeptic would be able to overcome a silly primitive superstition like fear of the undead to be able to see the truth.” She practically beamed at me.

We were getting off track—I had to find out what she had meant before. “Tell me what you meant by 'the ones who survive'?”

She spoke to me dismissively. “Both the virus and the antiviral are mixed with other drugs. In the case of the virus, there is a paralyzing agent to simulate death, as well as a drug to cause a slight psychosis, and another one to lower inhibitions. Add a drug that tricks the body into feeling an insatiable hunger, as well as a powerful steroid to not only overcome the paralyzing agent, but to create both rage and strength, and voila—instant killing machine.”

The thought of such a potent cocktail of drugs being given to an unwitting population— _ volunteers _ , Jonas had said—made me ill. But I had to find out what was happening to Theo. “And the antiviral?” I asked.

“Ah, that's the tricky part. The antiviral also contains a paralyzing agent, as well as drugs that blur the memory—to give the events that have transpired a dream-like, surreal quality, you understand. Really, to give proper credit where credit is due, I have to thank the rave scene—the experiments that people are willing to perform on themselves in order to have a good time were  _ most _ helpful to me.”

She was off track again, her mind off someplace else—probably experimenting on unsuspecting partiers. I must have made a sound of frustration, because she glanced back at me and finished. “Yes, well, but back to the antiviral. Like I said before, it contains the same paralyzing agent, but  _ not _ the steroids. The heart stops, and then it never starts again. The patient is cured, but he's also dead.”

I felt numb. Was this true? Or was it just a trick to get me to reveal Theo's whereabouts. “How long?” I asked, my voice a whisper.

She shrugged. “A few hours, depending on the patient.” She turned to Mankiewics—he had been staring straight ahead, expressionless, the whole time she had been speaking—and said, “Had they started crashing yet when you were upstairs, Benton?”

He looked confused. Was it because he wasn't quick enough to catch on to the fact that she needed him to play along, or just because she was so intimidating? “Just one, Ma'am. And it's Mankiewics.”

That might explain his confusion.

“Yes, well,” Dr. Jonas continued, seeming slightly perturbed at being corrected. “And what was the result?”

“Full recovery, Ma'am. The heart was returned to a normal rhythm.”

“After how many shocks?”

“Ma'am?” He turned his head to look at her for a second before he seemed to remember himself and snapped his eyes back forward again.

“How many times did you have to shock the heart, Mr. ah. . .”

“Mankiewics, Ma'am. And I-I'm not sure. I didn't realize we were supposed to keep track. It won't happen again.” He was clearly nervous now.

Dr. Jonas spoke in what she must have thought was a soothing tone; if anything, it was even more menacing than her usual one. Like a wasp trapped in a jar. “Don't worry about it, Mr.  _ Mankiewics _ .” She said the name smugly, like a child that has just learned a new word. “Just make your best guess.”

“Six?”

Dr. Jonas's voice practically purred when she then said, “Would the patient have survived without outside help?”

Mankiewics looked over at her again, clearly miserable. He seemed to know better than to ask her a question again, though, and so he just looked ahead and said, “No Ma'am. They would not.”

“I see. Thank you,  _ Mankiewics _ .” She turned to beam at me. At just that moment, however, there was an upswell in the amount of barking and snarling that was coming from the dive pool at our feet, and we all looked down. 

There must have been forty of them packed into the deep pool, all clustered around the lifeless body of of what looked to be a young ski bum. She had had long blonde hair tied up in twin braids, and a hot pink puffy down jacket. Although they had all been riveted by the sight of us when we had first entered the room now they were focused on devouring her. There was a wet, ripping sound, and one of her arms came loose in a spray of blood and a shower of feathers from the torn jacket. The feathers clung to the fresh blood, and for a moment several of the zombies nearest to her looked like they were sporting thick white beards, like so many Zombie Santas.

I swallowed hard to keep down the contents of my stomach, and tried once more to take a step back, momentarily forgetting that there was a man on either side of me holding me in place. I tried to look away from the spectacle of it all, but found that I couldn't do that either. Again I swallowed hard. Christmas was definitely never going to be the same again.

Dr. Jonas's eyes glittered as she watched the carnage below us. “Fascinating,” she said. “I've never seen them eat one of their own before.” She looked at her watch and then went to a whiteboard in the corner. It's original purpose had obviously been to keep track of who had reserved pool time, as evidenced by how it was divided into half-hour time slots. Now, however, it being used as a sort of zombie tally. Under the 6:30-7:00 am slot, Jonas wrote, “subject #17 expired and consumed.”

Then she turned back to me. “So. Let me put this to you bluntly. Depending on when you gave your friend the dose of antiviral it is extremely likely that he is now dead. In which case your silence is only protecting a corpse.” She glanced down into the pandemonium of the dive pool again, and then back to me. “It takes them quite a while to get to an organ that will actually kill, you know.” There were grunts and squeals below us as they all pushed to get closer to their chosen “snack.” Jonas smiled at the sight, her lips pulling back over her teeth like a dog. “Your best hope is that you go into shock from blood loss, but even then it seems as if the feel of the teeth on the flesh always revives the victim several times before they die. It really is quite brutal to watch.”

She licked her lips as she said the last part, not looking like someone who found watching someone being eaten alive brutal at all.

At that I finally found the strength to look away. “What do you want?” I asked.

“Nothing, really: just tell me where he is.”

“You'll kill him.”

She looked at me with what, I suppose, must pass for pity in her book. “He's already dead.”

I tried to picture Theo, dead in the bed we had just shared, his black hair fanned out across his white skin, his sharp blue eyes dull and lifeless. And I just couldn't. “You're lying,” I said.

She sighed, and then looked at her watch before walking back to the whiteboard. Under the 7:00-7:30 am slot she wrote “Subjects fed.” “Throw her in,” she said to the men holding me.

I braced my feet against the rough pool deck, but it was no good: the men holding me outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds each. Webb gave me a hard shove that would have toppled me into the pool if it wasn't for the fact that at the same time Mankiewics pulled me back. Dr. Jonas looked at him incredulously. “Are you disobeying a direct order?” she asked him.

“No, Ma'am,” he stuttered out. “It's just that—I know she'll talk. If we just give it time. I mean, surely there's another way. Something. . .” His voice petered out at the end.

Dr. Jonas turned the full force of her glare onto him then, and even though he was at least a foot taller than her she seemed to tower above him as she spoke. “I have no doubt we will get her to talk. Unfortunately, at this point I am sure that most of what she tells us will be lies; she could have us running around this town for the next two days. And we don't have two days. We're pulling out in two hours. Maybe you'll even be pulling out with us.”

The threat in her voice was unmistakeable, and Mankiewics tightened his grip on my arm. “Ma'am,” he said, in a tone of compliance.

“Good,” Jonas responded. “I'm  _ so _ glad to see that we're back on the same page. Now throw her in.”

They both tightened their grips on my arms again. “Wait!” I said. “There's something you don't know.”

“I doubt that,” Jonas said dryly, but she motioned for the men to stop before addressing me. “Well? What is it?”

I looked down at the zombies in the pool; one of them looked at me as well, his flat black eyes meeting my own. I recognized him: his name was David, and he had worked at Enrico's last summer while he waited for the slopes to open up again. He was a line cook, and once, when the dish-washing machine had broken down he had stayed late to help me hand wash all of the dishes. I had always gotten the impression that he kind of had a thing for me.

Watching him look at me now I still got that impression, although as I saw him pull back his lips and show his teeth I realized it wasn't the same kind of a “thing” at all. I turned to Jonas.

Although I spoke to her my words were really for Mankiewics. Right now he was my only hope. “Do you know Oscar Ramirez?” I asked. I felt him tighten his grip on my arm, and felt a little glimmer of hope. Were they friends? Roommates?

“Are you referring to the man you attacked when you absconded with my subject earlier?” Jonas asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“What about him?”

“He told me something.”

That got her attention. “Was that before or after you knocked him unconscious?”

So: she still hadn't realized that Ramirez had helped us. I hoped he was well on his way over the pass by now—not that I was really betraying him. Eventually Dr. Jonas would realize what had happened all on her own—of that I had no doubt.

“After,” I said. “And I didn't really knock him out. He helped us escape.”

Dr. Jonas sneered at me. “Do you really think I didn't know that? How do you think I recognized you up at the school? I have the whole thing on tape. Don't worry—Ramirez will get what is coming to him. I don't take betrayal lightly.”

Good, if she already knew then I wasn't getting him into any more trouble. “I don't think he will,” I said. “He's gone. But like I said before, he told me something before he left. Do you want to know what it was?”

“By all means: elucidate it for me.”

I turned to Mankiewics now; he was looking rather pale at what had already been revealed about Ramirez. When I spoke my words were for him. “He said that Theo and I reminded him that he was still human. Just like you are, Mr. Mankiewics. Please don't do this.” I looked straight into his eyes.

He hesitated one moment and then wrenched me away from Webb and thrust me behind his back. When he spoke his voice was thick and husky. “Why do we have to kill her?”

Dr. Jonas surprised me; instead of losing her temper she spoke soothingly to Mankiewics, like a mother comforting a child. “ _ We're  _ not killing her, Mankiewics—the virus is. Think about it—she should have received her injection back at the school. Barring that, she should have gotten a secondary infection from one of the test subjects. By not cooperating she has endangered our entire mission, and, by extension, endangered all of your men.” 

He shook his head, as if trying to keep her voice out. “No,” he said, “that's crazy.”

“What's crazy was making your men go door to door in Fallujah. Or making them search the caves of Kandahar. What's crazy was sending good soldiers to die in the tunnels beneath Ho Chi Minh. Don't you remember what it was like in Mogadishu? The darkness, the screams, the confusion? I'm trying to  _ stop _ the madness. And this girl is in our way.” Jonas had walked up to him as she spoke. She slipped her hand in her pocket at the same time that Mankiewics ran his fingers through his short brown hair and looked over at the dive pool in indecision. Before I could shout a warning she pulled something out of her pocket, placed it against his chest and said, “And so are you.”

He let go of me just before she touched him. There was a crackling sound, and the smell of burning flesh, and then Mankiewics was arcing back away from us, eyes wide open in shock as he fell over the side and into the pool. The zombies let out a collective howl of anticipation and then there was nothing but the sound of rending flesh and feral yelps. He never made a sound; I hoped that the taser had stopped his heart before he even fell.

“You're next,” said Jonas, reaching toward me with the device in her hand. I looked away from the menacing metal points coming toward me and up into her eyes; I flinched at what I saw there.

She was completely insane.

I put my hands up anyway and started to plead for my life. “Please,” I said, “don't—”

Suddenly the stun gun flew out of her hands and spun into the pool. I stared at her empty hand in confusion for a split second before I registered the fact that my ears were ringing and I could smell the acrid smell of carbite. At practically the same time a light exploded above us, showering us all with glass. Jonas cried out in pain, and then cradled her hand to her chest. I looked over at Webb in surprise; I hadn't thought that  _ he _ was sympathetic to my plight. And I was right—he was just as shocked as I was. He was reaching for his gun when I heard my dad's voice from the doorway.

“Don't even think about it. Come here Addie.”

I didn't have to be told twice; without hesitation I pulled myself free of Webb's loosened grip and ran to my dad's side. He was bleeding from a cut to his lip and one just above where his left eyebrow used to be, but all in all he didn't look much worse off than he did after a typical Saturday night bike ride home. “Nice timing,” I said, trying to sound casual, but my voice cracked on the last syllable. He glanced at me and then pulled me close.

“Nice shooting,” Bill added, looking at Dr. Jonas, who was still clutching her hand to her chest.

“Actually, I was aiming for her head,” said my dad.

Webb made a move in our direction and my dad and Bill both pointed their guns at him with steady hands. “But I think I've found my range now,” my dad said, his gun aimed directly at Jonas's face. Webb stopped.

Dr. Jonas turned to him in scorn. “Take these men out.”

He looked at the guns in Dad and Bills' hands, and then at her, incredulously. “Ma'am?”

She stepped closer to him, into the circle of darkness caused by the missing light. In the shadows her eyes took on the same flat black quality as the zombies, and when she spoke it was with their fierce hiss. “They know too much. All of them. They must be eliminated.”

My dad spoke up then, his tone conciliatory. “Whoa, now, hold on there. I don't know  _ anything _ .”

Bill chimed in. “And I know even less than he does.”

Webb looked at me, waiting. Was I supposed to pretend that I didn't know anything as well? I could do that. “Where am I?” I said. “What's going on? The stress—I think I have amnesia.” Webb gave me a hard look, and then spoke to my dad again.

“What happened to my men? The ones who were upstairs with you.”

“A little bloody. A lot pissed. But alive. They're tied up behind the bar.”

Webb nodded once, and then put his gun down on the pool deck before he held up his hands in submission. Jonas was nearly apoplectic in her rage. “Just what do you think you're doing?”

“Saving our lives, Ma'am.”

“Saving your  _ own _ , you mean,” she sneered. “I didn't realize that your particular unit was capable of producing such cowards—I'll remember that the next time I go recruiting, which, I'm beginning to suspect, will be very soon.”

Webb paused, and then he spoke to me, his tone deceptively casual. “So Ramirez said that you reminded him that he was still human, did he?”

Was this a trick to see if I would stick with my laughable “post-traumatic stress amnesia” story? If so, I failed. “Yeah,” I said. “He did.”

Webb nodded once to himself, and then seemed to come to a decision. He smiled a tight little smile that failed to reach his eyes, and then he said, “Good for him; it must be nice.”

And then he pushed Jonas into the pool.

 


	26. Chapter 26

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Chapter Twenty-Six: Theo

 

 

As I felt my life slip away time seemed to slow down and images appeared in my brain. To say that my life was flashing before my eyes would have been putting it way too simply. I  _ did _ see things from my past but they were few and far between, tucked in amongst a thousand other scenes. In the beginning there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the things I was seeing: first I would see myself in some scene from the past, and then, like a movie set to fast forward, I would see everything that occurred after that scene, spinning out into even more scenes that became hazier and hazier the more I looked at them. 

And then, directly afterwards, I would see the same original scene repeated, only with small differences. For instance: instead of watching myself walk past the bullies in my old grade school I saw myself fight them. Or tell on them. Or even join them. And then I saw how the scenes that came afterward would have played out, each one becoming hazier and hazier until they faded back out and into nothingness again.

When I got to the scene of Addie and I at the prom I wanted to look away—it was so painful to watch. But not nearly as painful as watching what would have happened if I had made a different decision. True, I saw my father's rage at his losing the contract he was so desperate to get. I saw him tearing up the brochures for the summer art institute. I saw him forbid me from seeing Addie ever again.

And then I saw the summer that followed, when I defied him and spent every waking minute (and most of my sleeping ones) at Addie's side. I saw us biking high up into alpine meadows, my paints and canvases securely strapped to our bikes. I saw Addie waiting for me, patiently, as I painted the best  _ plein air _ scenes of my life, and using those canvases to get into the art institute the following summer, on full scholarship.

I tried desperately to cling to those scenes, but they, too, turned hazy and slipped away.

And then they were all slipping away, even the scenes that I knew were real. Scenes of what had just happened: the party, the carnage, the drive to feed and the fight against it. Even the moments I had spent in Addie's arms, just hours earlier, slipped away, until all that was left was shadows and dreams. I wandered in darkness for what seemed like an eternity, and yet I felt safe. Then, in the middle of my dark passage, I felt a sharp pain in my heart, far worse than anything I had felt before. I opened my eyes and saw the man from Enrico's leaning over me, white paddles in his hands. Our eyes met for a brief second and then he looked away, and I closed my own eyes again, suddenly exhausted. I could feel myself slipping back into the darkness, but somehow I knew that it was different than the darkness of before. This time, I only slept. And dreamed.

Such strange dreams. Nightmares, really, although I never had nightmares.

But this time I did. Stranger still, my nightmares were filled with zombies. No:  _ I  _ was a zombie. And Addie was there, but she wasn't like me. She was helping me; she  _ loved _ me. I was a zombie, and yet, Addie still loved me.

It was ridiculous. I started to laugh, but then I couldn't—something was in my throat. I thrashed and tried to remove it but hands were holding my own hands down. I started to panic and then I heard an unfamiliar voice speaking slowly and firmly into my ear.

“Theo. Relax. You're in a hospital. You have a respirator in your throat to help you breathe. On the count of three I'm going to remove it, okay? Nod your head if you understand me.”

I tried to open my eyes, but couldn't—there was some sort of tape holding them shut. Next to me I could hear a muted beeping, and the slow heave and sigh of air being pushed in and out. That must be the respirator. I nodded, desperate to get this thing out of my throat. The voice had said I was in a hospital. Where? Solanan wasn't big enough to have it's own hospital.

“Okay then, on the count of three I want you to cough as hard as you can and I'll remove the tube. Are you ready?”

I nodded again.

“Good. One, two,—”

I coughed and felt a searing pain as a tube was pulled out of my lungs, up my throat, and past my lips. I reached up to try to pull the tape off of my eyes, feeling, for the first time, something pull against the back of my left hand.

“Careful—you don't want to pull out your IV. Wait one second and I'll remove the tape.”

Something warm and wet was wiped over my eyes, and then the tape was pulled away. I blinked, the bright overhead lights making my eyes water. Looking up I saw a round-faced black woman in pink nurse's scrubs smiling down at me. I turned my head and scanned the rest of the room, but there was no one.

“Where's Addie?” I said, my voice a raspy croak.

The nurse frowned. “Who's Addie?” she said.

I couldn't answer her. Not because of the pain in my throat. But because, suddenly, I didn't know.

 


	27. Chapter 27

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Chapter Twenty-Seven: Addie

 

The longest night of my life was followed by the longest weeks ever.

After he had pushed Jonas into the pit Webb had turned to us, lit a cigarette, and said, “Go home. If you're smart, you'll stay there for the next two days. If you're  _ real _ smart you'll never mention a word of this to anybody.”

We were real smart—we didn't mention what we had seen to anybody. Not that they would have listened to us; when Dad, Bill and I got back up to the lobby there was a carefully orchestrated operation going on. As each set of concerned parents streamed into the lobby they were met by a Shelley Security agent who took their child's name and led them into one of two rooms—from the amount of wailing and crying that was coming from the second room it was obvious that there were two groups: the ones whose children had made it, and the ones who hadn't.

I glanced into the room filled with parents of the kids who hadn't made it and saw Shelley Security agents offering words of consolation as well as handing out cups of steaming beverages. The parents who had already drunk the beverages were staring off into space as the agents spoke to them in low, soothing tones. I saw the parents nod blankly once or twice, and then the agent would move on to the next parent.

I couldn't see what was happening in the second room.

“I have to go to Theo,” I told my dad.

“Addie, I think that it would be best—for now—if you stayed away from Theo Frank.”

We were outside the hotel. I turned to him in disbelief. “You're not telling me you actually believe what she said, about this all being a plot Theo and I concocted together?”

He pulled me aside, out of earshot of the parents who were still streaming into the hotel; there seemed to be an awful lot of them, which made me realize that the bridge must be open again. These were the parents who had left town for the meeting. I stared around us, looking for Theo's parents. It was only when my dad waved his hand in front of my face that I realized he had been talking to me quietly.

“Addie? Hello?” I looked at him. “Don't be ridiculous—of course I don't believe that. But these people still might.”

“I don't care—Theo's sick. He needs me.”

My dad opened his mouth to argue with me some more when Bill spoke up. “Let me go get him. I'll bring him down here and wait for his parents to arrive. I'll say I found him on the street. Your name won't need to come up at all.”

I wrapped my arms around myself as the rising sun brought with it cold winds streaming through the streets. My dad put his arm around me, and I leaned into the warmth as he said, “Let Bill do it, Addie. Please.”

I should have argued with him. I should have insisted. But the truth was I didn't want to have to face what I might find when I got there. Not that I was afraid that Theo was dead—somehow, despite what Jonas had said, I knew that a heart as strong and vital as Theo's would survive anything—but because I didn't want to see that same look of regret that I had seen on his face before. At least this way I could maintain the fantasy that Theo loved me again for just a little while longer. And so I nodded, and my dad and I went home.

It was hours before Bill came by and told us the news. As I had thought, Theo had still been alive. Bill had carried him down to the hotel and then handed him over to Webb, telling Webb as he did so that he would be holding him _personally_ responsible for Theo's safety.

It hadn't been too long after that, Bill had said, that Theo's parents had shown up, screaming at everyone in sight. As Bill left he had overheard Theo's dad on the phone with a private ambulance service (cell phone service, as well as regular phone service, electricity, and internet connections were all restored at the same time the bridge reopened), making plans to take both Theo and Isabel to the closest hospital.

In the end almost  _ everyone  _ went to the hospital. Or to the morgue. I didn't. Between my dad and my mom I had more than enough attention without the added prospect of doctors and nurses hovering over me, asking me questions I didn't want to answer about the obvious bite wound on my shoulder.

Yeah, that's right: my dad  _ and _ my mom. Because one of the many changes that occurred in the days and weeks after the “Invasion” (the media's term for what happened in Solanan), was that my mom heard about it and came back.

Just like that. And we forgave her.

For everything.

I know that sounds ridiculous, after all she had done to my dad and I—especially after all she had done to me—but the truth was that living through everything we had had given us both a whole new appreciation for how small mistakes can change your destiny. And how grief can affect your decision making skills.

We'd had no idea how hard it had been for my mom to deal with her father's illness or how deeply she had been devastated by his subsequent death. We'd just assumed that, as his primary caretaker in his final few months, she would have been the most prepared among us to handle his death. But the truth was she had been lost the whole time she had been over there, her loneliness and vulnerability making her an easy target for someone like Swami Steve.

She had realized all of that months before the “Invasion” had hit but had been too ashamed to come back to us. So instead she had stayed where she was, plotting behind the scenes to move money around in a complicated Ponzi scheme that had only ended when she had pulled everything out and used it to try and restore my beleaguered credit.

She had been fairly successful: I certainly wouldn't be buying a house anytime soon but at least now I was a good enough risk for some student loans. Which meant that I would be leaving Solanan in the fall for college.

I wasn't the only one who was leaving—I was just one of the few who had any intentions of ever coming back.

You could say that Solanan was a ghost town now, but I had seen what it looked like when it was populated with the “living dead” and there was no comparing Solanan then to the Solanan now. For one thing, Solanan now was a lot quieter.

There's nothing like having the media report on thousands of undead wandering the streets of your town to put a damper on tourism. (They exaggerated—there weren't even a thousand people  _ in _ Solanan at the time). And even though the media was spinning it as just another case of mass hysteria, people, understandably, weren't willing to take a chance. And so, one by one, houses emptied and stores closed. The first to go were stores like the “Magical Vortex,” a place that had mystified all of us for years by its ability to remain in business selling things like magnetic bracelets and “power crystals.”

Next went the t-shirt shops, and then the high-end kitchen stores. There was even a rumor that the Yoga Supply Store was going to be replaced with a hardware store.

The high school was a total loss. Although the fire had gone out before the building itself was destroyed the interior of the school was a complete loss. At first this didn't matter—Zane and I were the only two students fit enough to attend classes, and Zane was still suffering from the mental effects of nearly being eaten at Theo's party.

Later though, as the weeks went by and students started to trickle back into town they reopened the old elementary school that had been shuttered a decade before and turned into storage. It wasn't as large as the high school had been, but then again, it didn't have to be. For one thing, thanks to the memory-erasing agents that had been in the antiviral, there wasn't much call for AP classes any more.

The problem was that on some people the drugs seemed to work just as intended: they had clear memories up until the fateful weekend and then hazy images that were too fanciful to believe. Others, however, suffered memory loss of weeks, months—even years. One boy, Nathan, was devastated to find that he was enrolled in calculus—but had no memory of ever having taken Algebra.

And then there were all of the students that just never came back.

Like Theo.

As the first few days went by and I heard nothing I was scared. I quizzed Bill relentlessly on what condition Theo had been in when he had delivered him to the hotel. I also asked him over and over again if he had heard what his parents had said, whether or not they had mentioned where they were taking him. “Addie,” he had replied, over and over again, “I don't think they knew. I think that their only plans at that point were to get  _ away _ .” 

One month to the day that everything ended I heard a car make its way up the road past our compound to Theo's house and I sprinted up after it, using the path that skirted the waterfall. I was sure that when I got to the top I would see Theo step out of the car. What I saw instead, however, took my breath away: the car that pulled up had one of those cheap magnetic signs on its side advertising the fact that it belonged to an appraisal service.

The Franks were selling their house.

They were never coming back.

 

 

The rest of the school year passed by in a blur for me, although, according to my transcripts, I did very well. With the new smaller school there was no room for classes like Home Ec and Welding, or even the college prep classes I had been in the year before; we were all in classes together now, the bright and the dull, the motivated and the uninspired. Under those circumstances it was hard for me not to shine—I had never been able to stand the tension of a teacher asking a question and then waiting forlornly for someone to answer, and the teachers rewarded me by giving me excellent grades.

Theoretically, of course, I should never have been able to pull my grades up in just a few weeks, but since the situation in Solanan didn't fit into any of the district's contingency plans—not the one for flooding, or evacuation due to wildfire, or even nuclear war (yeah, they had one for that)—there were simply no rules to follow. And so we kind of made up our own as we went along.

Which is why, I suppose, they decided to hold the prom.

It was touted as a “return to normalcy” for the entire town, but the truth was that there are some girls who dream of “The Prom” their entire lives, and they weren't about to let something like a nearly apocalyptic invasion of the living dead deter them.

Sheeley Stern was one such girl. Small and quiet before the “incident,” she had found her voice after it. The Sheeley of “before” had been content to remain in the background: she had been a cheerleader, but not one of the leaders; she had been on Student Council—as the Treasurer. And she had been on the prom committee—in charge of refreshments.

Now, however, she was a force to be reckoned with—and one that was clearly not to be denied. There  _ would _ be a prom this year.

Which meant that, for one weekend at least, I would be leaving town after all.

 


	28. Chapter 28

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Chapter Twenty-Eight:Theo

 

 

My mother had been bugging me for weeks to buy new clothes, and even though I could see her point I still resisted it. I wasn't sure exactly why I resisted; after all, the collection of thick pants and long-sleeved t-shirts that made up my wardrobe were completely inappropriate for Miami in late spring. Isabel certainly hadn't resisted the command to shop—she had gone out immediately upon her release from the hospital. In fact, if they had had a boutique  _ in _ the hospital I'm sure she would have started shopping from her wheelchair.

Maybe that was it—I never could stand doing what Isabel did.

Eventually, though, the muggy Miami heat became even more oppressive than my mother's nagging, and I finally gave in—on the condition that I got to do all of my shopping alone. My mother agreed, and one day I found myself released from my daily tutoring session and ordered to go shop. (My dad had decided that there was no point in enrolling me in a new school for just a few months; after all, according to him, I had been accepted into the pre-law program at his alma mater just before the “incident” occurred. Didn't I remember? No, I didn't, but that wasn't surprising—there was a lot of stuff I didn't remember these days.)

One thing I  _ did _ remember, however, was how much I hated the sterile sameness of malls—even the high end ones that Isabel and my mother loved, which is why I had insisted on shopping  _ my _ way. My mother didn't care—anything to get me to “stop dressing like a ski bum.” She even got me my own credit card for the occasion. I glanced at the card as I tucked it into my wallet and got ready to leave before I stopped to flip through all of the things that were in there, trying once more to make sense of the life I had lived “before.” 

There were business cards for three different art galleries in New York City, one with the words 'Nice work—I'd love to see more' written on the back. There was my Solanan High School ID card, my Colorado driver's license, and my social security card. Then there were the photos. Most of them were of my family: a Christmas portrait of all of us with painted-on smiles, a picture of a nearly toothless Isabel in the third grade, a snapshot of a dog I had owned before we had moved to Solanan.

All of those pictures were familiar to me, the memories of the days on which they had been taken coming back to me crystal clear (I remembered, for example, how I had cried as I took the picture of my dog Blue. There wasn't “room” for him at the new house, my dad had said.) But there was one picture in there that I just couldn't place. It was of a girl with dark hair and golden eyes. She was looking back over her shoulder at whoever had taken the picture and you could see that she was surprised and amused at being photographed. Her lips curled up playfully at the corners, and there was a wisp of hair blowing in front of her face that my fingers itched to touch.

I had flipped this picture over a hundred times, hoping to find an inscription, but there was nothing. I thought about asking my mother about it, but stopped myself, remembering the way she had reacted to the questions I had asked her when I was still in the hospital.

“Why do you want to know all of these things?” she had asked. “That part of your life is  _ over— _ thank God. You should be happy.”

Maybe I should have been happy, but I wasn't. And neither was anyone else in my family—not really. My father, especially, didn't seem very happy; in fact, he seemed more on the terrified side of things. Especially when either Isabel or I were in the same room with him. Just last week I had tried to sit next to him on the couch and he had literally bolted up and out of the room before I had even sat all the way down.

Not that I could blame him—I wasn't too happy with my company, either. Half the time I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin and the other half of the time I felt like I was walking around in a fog. Worse yet was how I always felt like there were things I should be doing and people I should be talking to, but every time I tried to remember what those things and who those people were the fog came back twice as thick and I ended up having to go lie down for a few hours just to be able to function.

I could tell Isabel felt the same way, although the few times I tried to talk to her about it she denied it adamantly. And it seemed like with her, the solution to both the anxiousness and the fog was the same: more shopping.

Who knows? Maybe she had the right idea. It was worth a try. At least that's what I told myself as I headed out the door that day.

Holding that thought in mind I pulled out of our driveway, listened to the clang of the automatic gates shutting behind me, and turned left towards downtown. I had noticed before that there was a street that was practically lined with vintage clothing shops, and even though I had agreed to shop for  _ new _ clothes, I hadn't agreed on how I would define “new.” Technically these clothes would be new—new for me, at least. 

I parked on the street and fed the meter, and even though it was only ten in the morning I could feel the sweat beginning to form underneath my flannel shirt and blue jeans. Maybe my mother was right: maybe it really  _ was _ time to buy some more appropriate clothing. I turned to go into the first store I came to, and then stopped—it specialized in vintage formal wear, not exactly the appropriate I was looking for. I glanced at the window display and moved on. But then I was back, studying the mannequin in the window. And then my phone was in my hand, and I was dialing numbers that seemed to just magically appear in my head, swirling up and out of the fog that had covered my brain for weeks.

I held my breath as the phone rang, but eventually I had to give up and start breathing again.

There was no answer.

 


	29. Chapter 29

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Chapter Twenty-Nine: Addie

 

 

_ This _ , I thought to myself,  _ is going to be the world's largest campfire. More like a bonfire, really—or a funeral pyre _ . Or maybe it would just be the world's longest, depending on how many days I ended up staying.  _ Or even weeks _ , I added, looking at the gigantic pile of wood I had gathered to burn.

When I had first arrived at this high meadow it had seemed like such a good idea to gather as much firewood as possible; after all, you can never have too much security against an ever-changing and uncertain future. At least, that was what I had told myself.

The truth was, though, that as soon as I had stepped off of my bike and no longer had to watch for every rock and tree root on the shadowed trail the wheels in my head had started up again, and I needed to find  _ something _ to distract myself with.

I did this first by setting up my tent with military preciseness, then hanging up my food bag, and then finding twelve of the absolutely most  _ perfect _ rocks to make a campfire ring. Finally, lacking a vacuum cleaner with which to “tidy the place up,” I had gone out looking for firewood. 

Now, two hours later, as the skies turned rosy and the first few stars began to appear, I tried to select the perfect dead branches to feed into the growing fire which was already waist high. Whatever I did, though, it was no good—I couldn't get Theo out of my mind.

It was stupid, really, that once again all of my troubles had started with the prom. What the hell was up with that? I had never even wanted to go to the prom in the first place— _ any _ prom—and now the damn thing had made me miserable not just once, but twice. And the funny thing was (if, by funny, you meant heart-breakingly painful), both times the pain had been completely unexpected.

I thought back to the source of the latest blow—Upchuckie—and found myself thinking that the  _ next  _ time I had a chance to kill him and get away with it I was going to take it. The last prom it had been Upchuckie's horse laugh ringing out across the gym as Theo had rebuffed me that had been the first real hint of the mockery that was to come my way. This time it had been his words, so obviously meant for me to overhear.

“Who are you taking to the prom, Charles?” the girl—a freshman named Jacqueline—had asked Upchuckie, her intentions painfully obvious.

“I don't know,” he had replied, speaking loud enough for the whole room to hear. “I was kind of hoping to take Isabel Frank, but I guess her prom is the same weekend as ours. She said she would have loved to have come but Theo met this girl he's really into and he wants her to double with them. I guess this infection thing really brought them closer together and she says she doesn't want to spoil that.”

“Oh,” said Jacqueline, obviously not hearing anything after the fact that Upchuckie was  _ not _ going to use this moment as an opportunity to ask her to go with him.

That afternoon I had made my way home in a trance, pondering the full implications of what Upchuckie had just said. Theo really wasn't coming back. What was more it sounded like he had recovered fully and was moving on with his life. If anything it sounded like he was doing even better than before, with no ill effects from either Dr. Jonas or her shots.  _ Well, good for him _ , I thought.  _ I'm happy for him. I really am _ .  _ I hope that he has a long and happy life. I hope that _ —I threw myself across my bed and cried for the rest of the night.

When I met my parents the next morning over breakfast I told them I was planning on spending the upcoming weekend camping. At first my mom was against it.

“But this weekend is the  _ prom _ . You can't miss that.”

My dad caught on much quicker. “I know the perfect place,” he said. “Very secluded. Very difficult to get to—there are no roads. You won't run into a soul.”

“George, that hardly sounds like the type of place a young girl should go to on her own—”

I cut her off. “Sounds perfect. Thanks, Dad.”

He had reached over then and grabbed a forest service map—one was never too far from hand in the tiny trailer—and opened it up. “I'll show you how to get there,” he said. My mom, finally picking up on the vibe between the two of us, went silent.

 

 

My dad had been right—this place  _ was _ difficult to get to—I never would have found it without his map. And he was also right about how secluded it was—it felt as if I were a million miles from anyone. Which was interesting, because that was how I had been feeling in my heart for the past few weeks now.

Alone. Completely and utterly alone.

I fed another dry branch into the fire—now it was at shoulder level, as tall as a bonfire. I would have to stay up all night watching it to make sure it didn't burn out of control. That was okay—I hadn't planned on getting much sleep tonight anyway.

Sparks wheeled off of the newest log, spinning up against the sky like newborn stars in the twilight. In the heart of the fire a log cracked and popped, and then did it again. The third time, however, as I leaned in to see which log was cracking, I realized that the noise wasn't coming from the fire—it was coming from behind me.

Something was moving through the woods. And it was coming in my direction.

My heart moved up into my throat; there were still some of the infected (we no longer called them “zombies”) who were unaccounted for—their “missing” posters looked at you from every window and billboard in town. I picked up a club-sized log and spun around, noticing as I did so how light and flimsy the dry branch seemed in my hands—why hadn't I collected some heavier, green wood as well? It all became irrelevant, though, once I heard the voice that came out of the woods.

“Nice fire—where's the witch?”

It was Theo.

He came out of the woods in front of me, pushing a bike with a bedraggled bouquet tied to the front of the handlebars. The flowers, however, weren't the only things that were looking like hell: he was wearing what looked to be the remains of a tux, with his pants covered in mud from the knees down, one shoulder of his jacket ripped, and the white front of his shirt with large splotches of what looked like blood all down the front. Following the drops back to their source I saw that they had come from his nose, which looked crookeder than I remembered.

My mind buzzed with about a million questions. What came out when I opened my mouth, however, was, “I hope that's a rental.”

Theo grinned, and I felt my knees go weak. “The tux or the bike?” he said. I looked more closely at the bike and saw that it was the same bike my dad had been making for the Phoenix basketball player—the one he still wasn't happy enough with to send. How had Theo gotten a hold of it?

“The t-tux,” I stammered. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I recognize the bike—we call it the 'Ballbreaker.' It's got a twenty-four inch frame. Even  _ I _ rack my balls when I try to ride it, and I don't have any. How'd  _ you _ get it?” I was rambling now, saying the first thing that popped into my head—what was Theo  _ doing _ here?

Theo winced when I mentioned “racking my balls,” but only said, “George lent it to me. And, yeah, I did fall off of it a couple of times.” He gestured at the front of his shirt, at what I was sure now were bloodstains. “And no, the tux isn't a rental. I bought it. This morning. In Miami.”

I couldn't quite process what he was saying. He bought the tux  _ this morning?  _ In  _ Miami? _ I tried to think of an explanation for that, and couldn't. “Theo,” I finally said in defeat, “what are you doing here?”

“I'm here to take you to the prom.” He smiled when he said that, and my heart flip-flopped in my chest.

I took a deep breath, and said, in confusion, “You live in Miami now.”

He took a step forward, towards me. I fought both the urge to step closer to him and to pull away, and ended up staying exactly where I was. “I did,” he said. “I mean, I  _ do _ , for now, my family does, at least, but . . .” He trailed off, and then ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, a move that was so classically  _ Theo _ that I had to wrap my arms around myself to keep from leaping toward him. “Christ, and I thought it was difficult when I couldn't speak.”

“You . . . remember?” I was six inches away from him then, although I couldn't recall either one of us moving toward the other.

He reached his hand up to my face. “Some,” he whispered. “Nothing at first. And then, this morning, I saw the tux, and . . .” his other hand came up and cupped my chin. “Addie, did we . . .I mean . . . I remember . . .”

I tried to duck my chin, blushing, but his fingers kept their grip and so I just shut my eyes and said, “It's okay. Don't worry about it. It didn't mean a thing. You were still . . .  _ infected _ . . . then, and, well, you know what they say, the drive to procreate is very intense, and . . .” 

His grip on my chin tightened then, and I opened my eyes. He was glaring at me. “You think that I was driven by some sort of a primitive urge to  _ procreate? _ Addie, we used  _ protection _ . Would I have done that if I was just “driven to procreate'?”

“Well,” I said, jerking my chin out of his grasp and looking away, “you know, I hate to break it to you but you really sucked at being a zombie. I mean, you didn't eat  _ anyone _ , and the one chance you had to 'spread your seed,' you—”

His lips crushing down on mine stopped any further babbling on my part. I felt his fingers on the back of my head then, holding my head in place as he nibbled at my bottom lip until I gave in and began to kiss him back as passionately as he was kissing me. Then he groaned, and I was lost, my fingers in his hair, holding him in place as fiercely as he was holding me. Finally he pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. I felt his ragged breath against my lips and knew that he must be feeling mine as well. I inhaled deeply, letting his beautiful scent wash over me before I took another deep breath, and then another, until finally Theo pulled back and looked at me in concern.

“You smell different,” I said. I took another deep breath and then I knew: no turpentine. Grabbing his hand, I held it up to my face: except for some mud, and a scraped palm which I couldn't resist kissing, it was clean. No paint. “Theo, why aren't you painting?” I asked him.

He looked confused, and then his eyes lit up with joy and he whooped in delight. “That's it!” he shouted. “I  _ paint _ . That's what I've been missing—besides you, of course.”

I gaped at him. “You remembered  _ me _ before you remembered that you're a painter?”

“Of course,” he replied, his fingers tracing across my lips before he ducked back down for a soft kiss. “You're more important to me.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever. Since I met you. Since I woke up this morning. Since I came to my senses. Since  _ now _ .” 

I must have still looked unconvinced because he put his forehead against mine and sighed out, “Addie, how is it that the smartest girl I know is also the  _ dumbest?  _ Don't you realize that I've been in love with you since I was twelve years old?”

I tried to pull away from him then, confused and frightened by the hopeful feeling that was starting to form deep inside my chest. Theo, however, refused to let me go. And so I said the one thing guaranteed to drive him away. “But what about last year?” I blurted out.

He pulled his face away from mine then, his eyes downcast, but he didn't let me go. I couldn't help but admire the way his dark lashes swept against his skin, now a dusky tan. “Please,  _ please _ forgive me,” he said. “I was wrong. So wrong. Wrong to do it and then doubly wrong to blame you for how you reacted. I don't know what to say. I mean, I  _ thought _ you had gotten my note and were just being stubborn, but even if you  _ had _ gotten my note—”

“Wait a minute.” I stopped him. “You left me a note?”

He looked up, and his eyes were so full of remorse that I couldn't stop myself from putting my palm on the side of his face. He put his own hand over the top of mine and leaned into it. “Yes. But it doesn't matter. What I did was selfish, and inexcusable. It was unforgivable. I can't believe you didn't slam the door in my face when I came to your trailer the night of the outbreak.”

“You kind of looked like you'd just break it down if I did.” At that he closed his eyes again, and I found the strength to continue. “And besides, I couldn't. I've loved you since I was twelve, too.”

His eyes flew open. “And do you still?”

“Always.” I said. He smiled and bent to kiss me, but I stopped him by placing my fingers against his lips. He nibbled at them softly, bringing back all kinds of memories, and I swayed slightly before he caught me with one arm around my waist, bringing me closer so that he could pull my fingers away with his other hand and then kiss my nose, my cheek, my eye. I was breathless with desire and love, but I had to hear him say it again. This time, I had to  _ know _ . “And you?” I asked.

He seemed to understand what I was asking him. “As long as you'll have me.”

“Forever, then?” I asked. I meant it to come out jokingly, but my voice caught on the last word.

He lifted my chin and kissed me fiercely.

“Until I die.”

I kissed him back just as fiercely, and then, grinning, said into the corner of his mouth, “Sorry—you set the bar too high last time, when you came back from the dead for me. I want you after death as well.”

I felt, rather then saw, his answering grin. “Deal.”

 


End file.
